Hints For Special Oases

The following paragraphs deal with substances which either do not 'go' according to rule, or which illustrate principles that may be adopted with similar substances.

Anusol

The name of a proprietary pile-remedy. The following semi-official German imitation is from The Chemist and Druggist Diary, 1914:

Make into suppositories weighing 3 grammes each.

Aristol (described later) is sometimes prescribed in bougies for nasal affections and for urethral discharges. It decomposes readily on the application of heat. A prescription ordering 10 grains in a bougie, when compounded with 12 grains of cocoa-butter, gave a tough indiarubber-like mass by the hot method, a better one with 10 grains of cocoa-butter and 3 grains of spermaceti ointment; but the bougie is best made by the cold method, using cocoa-butter alone.

Balsam of Peru has now regained its ancient favour as an antiseptic. The following is a typical prescription for it:

Fiat pessus. Mitte tales duodecim.

The balsam makes the mass much too soft if cocoa-butter alone is used. It mixes easily with the fat, and that may tempt the dispenser to add it to the dish, which should not be done. The best plan of compounding is: Take 540 grains of cocoa-butter and 60 grains of white wax, shred, and melt on the water-bath. Mix the iodoform (subtilissimum) on a slab with the balsam, then add about a third of the melted basis, mix well, add a little more basis, again mix, and transfer to the dish, stirring all the time, then pour into the mould.

Boric Acid makes the cocoa-butter basis crumbly, and when compounded by the hot method the mould should be well lubricated with soft-soap lubricant (1 in 10 of water). The best suppository of boric acid is made with glycerinum acidi borici B.P. and gelatin on Squire's plan (page 192).

Bougies may also be made in the following manner : Glass tubing of suitable calibre is cut into convenient lengths, and the melted mass drawn into it by attaching a piece of indiarubber tubing to one end, and sucking the mass up. The mass solidifies in a few minutes, and is then pushed out with a piece of iron wire of sufficient thickness to go into the tube like a piston. Care should be taken that bougies are not made too hard. It is inadvisable to add wax to cocoa-butter in this case, but a mixture of cocoa-butter 2 parts, lanoline 1 part, and white wax 1 part, gives a tough mass which melts at the body-temperature, and is better than cocoa-butter alone. Mr. A. W. Gerrard described this method to the British Pharmaceutical Conference in 1906, but it had previously been given in several editions of this book.

Chloral Hydrate behaves with cocoa-butter much in the same way as it does with camphor, especially when heated. A mass containing 60 per cent, of chloral hydrate may be made as follows : Into a small wide-mouth bottle put 1 drachm of shredded white wax, and melt on a water-bath; then add 3 drachms of powdered chloral hydrate, shake well, and add 1 drachm of cocoa-butter previously melted. Continue to shake Until creamy, then mould. Cocoa-butter alone may be used by the cold method along with powdered chloral hydrate.

The following illustrate other methods:

Melt the cocoa-butter and pour into a well-lubricated and iced mould. Allow to stand for a minute so that the outer layer of fat becomes quite hard, and the inner remains liquid, then invert the mould to allow the liquid fat to flow out. Trim the hollow suppositories and put into each the doses of chloral hydrate and extract previously mixed, then fill up with melted cocoa-butter.

Melt the stearin on a water-bath and add the oleic acid, mix; next add the powdered'chloral hydrate, stir until dissolved, and just before the mass begins to set pour it into an iced mould previously well lubricated with spirituous solution of curd soap.

No. I. method is an ingenious way, suggested by Mr. A. H. Morgan, of getting over the difficulty which frequently arises of mixing certain things with the basis. It is really an extemporaneous method of making hollow suppositories.