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Manual of general medical technology including prescription-writing
Manual of general medical technology including prescriptionwriting Author:Edward Curtis Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER In. FORMS OF MEDICINES. The forms of medicines next require consideration, and our study here must be precise, for the products of pharmacy have cl... more »ass-titles and class-peculiarities which must be thoroughly understood by the prescribe!-. These products are most conveniently grouped for study into those for general and those for special application. Of the former, with solid drugs, the simplest form is the crude drug reduced to powder. Pulverization is an obvious prerequisite for the majority of applications of drugs, and where, in a prescription, the powdered condition of an. ingredient is a plain necessity, the pharmacist) in compounding, uses the powder without the physician being obliged to specifically order tha same. But also certain powders, simple and compound, are among the prescriptions of the Pharmacopoeia, constituting thus a kind of preparation, under the title PU'LVIS, Powder. Limitations in the use of the powder as a form of medicine are that deliquescent and oily substances do not keep well in that form, and"that corrosive, bad-tasting, or bulky medicaments cannot well or wisely be so administered. But where these conditions do not obtain, the powder is a convenient form, as the "doses" can be put up in separate paper packages, easily carried about and easily administered. According to the nature of the substance the powder can be taken dry, or in solution, or stirred into molasses, honey, or preserve, or enclosed within a mass of some pulpy sub" stance, such as apple-scrapings, or, more elegantly, for older patients, encased in the " capsules," or " wafers," sold by druggists for such purpose. A " capsule " is a cylindrical chamber of jujube paste or similar material, made in two pieces, whereof the one fits into the other with a telescope-joint. They...« less