Lloyd - Elixir & Flavoring Extracts Formulae - Soil and Health Library

PREFACE.
WERE pharmacists united in opposition to elixirs, and
sufficiently independent to warrant them in saying that they are
unnecessary preparations, and that they would not manufacture or
dispense them; or could pharmacists so influence and control
physicians as to positively prevent them from prescribing elixirs; or
were the past numbers of all our pharmaceutical journals possessed by,
or readily accessible to, each and every pharmacist in the country—
there would then be no necessity for, nor utility in, the publication of a
work upon elixirs and the methods of preparing them. At the present
time there undoubtedly exists a demand for this class of preparations,
and, in order to improve, as well as retain, their legitimate trade, our
pharmacists are, in a measure, compelled to dispense them, as they do
not desire to displease their medical patrons by any indications of what
might be considered as offensive dictation. Such being the case, and as
a large number of the pharmacists of this country are not possessors of
the past numbers of pharmaceutical journals, we have been induced to
prepare this little work.
In presenting these formulæ, the result of years of actual
laboratory experience, and the careful study of the back numbers of all
our pharmaceutical journals, we cannot doubt that they will be
valuable to pharmacists, and that the investment will quickly return to
each purchaser more than the outlay for the book.
Upon this question of elixirs we find our American
pharmacists greatly divided: some decidedly object to them, no matter
under what considerations or circumstances, and obstinately refuse to
listen to a favorable word for any one of them; others uphold that
carefully prepared elixirs, in which the disagreeableness and
offensiveness of certain drugs entering into their composition are
more or less masked, are to be commended. Not infrequently the
opponents of elixirs are quite violent in their denunciation of them,
and more especially as being of too complex a character; and yet these
very objectors will favor other mixtures and preparations that are still
more complex, and fully as unscientific as the majority of compound
elixirs. On the other hand, the advocates of elixirs frequently associate
incompatibles in their preparations, thereby rendering them valueless.