Compound Liquorice Powder.
Although this popular medicine was only made official by being adopted in the B. P. Additions, 1874, it had already acquired reputation as a pleasant laxative in household medicine, and had been familiar in German pharmacy for the better part of a century. It first appeared in the Prussian Pharmacopœia in 1799, and had been devised by a noted physician of Berlin, Dr. E. G. Kurella, who died in the year named. He called the mixture Pectoral Powder, and he made an electuary from similar ingredients.
The Prussian powder looks like a modification of a compound senna powder included in the first London Pharmacopœia, 1618. This contained senna, liquorice, caraway, fennel, cumin, spikenard, cinnamon, galangal, and gromwell seeds. Its “first contriver” (says Quincy) was Isaac Hollandicus.