Jour. Pharm

, 1907

new cut, that the vertue of the Spatula may be mixed with the Plaister, etc." Those who have access to medical books of still older dates will probably find in them similar descriptions. This lead soap, or plaster, as it was generally called, entered into all pharmacopoeias and will probably remain official as long as medicaments are used. The method of making it is based on the same principle and does not differ materially in the various countries; litharge, olive oil and water are boiled till saponification takes place. The lead plaster forms the base of a number of other plasters and is often mixed with a soluble soap; for instance, in a London Pharmacopoeia of 1720, a soap plaster is described, consisting of hard soap and lead plaster.

When the manufacture of soap became a prominent industry, additions of various natures were made, first to impart an agreeable odor and make the soap more attractive and desirable as a toilet article; but soon other ingredients were added with a view of giving it medicinal virtues. These so-called medicinal soaps, containing various medicaments that were otherwise applied in the form of ointments or plasters, as sulphur, tar, carbolic acid, etc., were in the beginning a strictly commercial enterprise, until two German dermatologists, Dr. Unna, of Hamburg, and Dr. Eickhoff, of Elberfeld, took this matter up in 1885 and created medicinal soaps on strictly scientific principles. Both wrote a series of articles recommending soaps in place of plasters and setting forth their advantages very eloquently. These advantages consist in the fact that soaps, as compared with plasters, are less troublesome, more effective, cleaner and less disagreeable, absolutely harmless and less expensive. Four different methods of application are recommended by these dermatologists, viz., simple washing; rubbing dry the applied foam with woolen cloths; allowing the foam to dry on the skin; and, finally, retaining the applied foam by means of water-tight dressings. The third method, the drying of the foam on the skin, is the most usual one. While, therefore, the soaps thus applied will also exercise. their cleansing properties, they are principally used as plasters, and if we call the lead plaster an insoluble soap, we may just as well call these medicated soaps soluble plasters. Both Drs. Unna and Eickhoff lay great stress on the necessity of preparing a good soap-stock to which the medication is added. They reject the cocoanut-oil soap, which is largely used as a fine toilet soap, on account of its foaming properties, and state that nine-tenths of the skin diseases,

as chapped hands, roughness, sensitiveness, etc., are caused by the use of such soaps. In connection with this statement the question might arise in this country if the composition of domestic and toilet soaps might not be a good subject for the attention of our friend Dr. Wiley, and if under the present Food and Drug Law a definition of "soap" as a hygienic agent might not be expected from the chemical autocrat in Washington. The soap that Dr. Eickhoff recommended as the best stock for medicinal soap consists of 3/4 parts of beef tallow and 14 olive oil, saponified with soda lye to a neutral soap. To this stock-soap a 5 per cent. mixture, consisting of 2 per cent. of lanolin and 3 per cent. olive oil, is added, in order to produce a superfatted soap, which is claimed to be far superior to neutral soap for medicinal purposes. A long list of medicinal soaps is prepared by various additions according to the kind of skin diseases for which they are used, as resorcin, salicylic acid, quinine, hydroxylamine, iodoform, kreolin, ergotin, iodine, menthol, salol, aristol, mercury compounds, etc.

The claim that superfatted soaps are more beneficial to the skin than neutral soaps, is a question the solution of which we must leave to the dermatologist; it may suffice to say that opposing views have been taken by many physicians who do not endorse this claim, on account of the want of stability of such soap and because of the free fatty acids that they contain which are said to be deleterious to the skin.

Soon after the investigations of Chevreul, efforts were also made to form soaps of other metals, and mercury, zinc and calcium soaps were prepared with more or less success. A drawback in their manufacture was the somewhat uncertain and varying composition of the various fats, and it was natural that the idea was conceived to first separate the fatty acids and then use the pure acid-oleic, palmitic, or stearic acid-to form soap. Prof. John Marshall, as early as 1872, proposed a combination of oleic acid with freshly precipitated oxides or alkaloids. However, he did not produce definite chemical compounds, but made solutions of such oleates in a large excess of oleic acid. Preparations of this kind were received with much favor by the medical profession, and in 1890 three of them found their way into the Pharmacopoeia, viz., the oleates of mercury, zinc and veratrine. In the last edition the zinc compound is again dropped, but atropia, cocaine, and quinine added. The per

Fig. 35. Corn starch grain treated with weak aqueous solution of safranin. Fig. 37. Potato starch grain treated with weak aqueous solution of gentianviolet.

Figs. 36, 38, 39. Wheat starch grains treated with weak aqueous solution of safranin.

centages of oxides and alkaloids vary from 2 to 25 per cent., and the name Oleate is adopted for the preparation.

This is greatly to be regretted; for, as stated before, these preparations are not definite chemical oleates, but mixtures or solutions of oleates in oleic acid and olive oil. On the other hand, a stearic acid soap, viz., zinc stearate, is described as a definite chemical compound, forming a fine white powder, but no method for its manufacture given.

It is not unlikely that soaps of definite composition as to the various fatty acids will receive more attention in the future; for the use of soap as base in place of ointment seems to gain favor from day to day, so that in the next edition of our Pharmacopoeia we may expect to see real oleates, and possibly solutions of oleates, in various fatty acids or oils.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE STARCH GRAIN.1

FIRST PAPER.2

BY HENRY KRAEMER.

There have been a number of hypotheses advanced to explain the origin, nature, and structure of the starch grain. (1) It was originally considered to be a bubble filled with a liquid, or, as stated by Nägeli, "eine mit Flüssigkeit gefüllte Blase." According to Von Mohl, Raspail considered that the starch grain consists "aus einer in Wasser unlöslichen blasenförmigen Hülle und einem löslichen gummiartigen Inhalte." (2) Then (1834) it was considered that to a central or excentral point, layer after layer was added, the peripheral layers thus being the last formed, this view having been advanced by Fritsche (1) and supported in a more or less modified form by Treviranus (2), Lindley (3), Schleiden (4), Braun (5), Schacht (6), Crüger (7), und Unger (8). (3) Payen (9) in 1838 conceived the

1

1 Reprinted from the Botanical Gazette, Vol. xxxiv, November, 1902. Since the publication of the author's papers on the starch grain, there have been sufficient inquiries on the subject to warrant republishing them at this time, particularly a these inquiries have come from those interested in the practical as well as the scientific side of the subject.-EDITOR.

An abstract of a preliminary paper on this subject was presented to the Society for Plant Morphology and Physiology, December, 1899.