Report of the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry
The Council has authorized publication of the following report on Burnham’s Soluble Iodine.
W. A. Puckner, Secretary.
Burnham’s Soluble Iodine is offered to the medical profession by the Burnham Soluble Iodine Company, Auburndale, Mass., under the claim that by
“... a new process hitherto unknown to chemistry,... Iodine is converted into a soluble article—soluble in water and soluble in gastric secretions and in the tissues.”
Beyond this no statement as to the qualitative or quantitative chemical identity of Burnham’s Soluble Iodine is furnished; this secrecy, of course, has given the preparation a certain mysterious prestige among unthinking physicians.
Burnham’s Soluble Iodine was examined in the Chemical Laboratory of the American Medical Association some six years ago and was found to be an alcoholic solution of free iodin (approximately 3 gm. per hundred c.c.) and combined iodin in the form of iodid (equivalent to about 2 gm. of potassium iodid per hundred c.c.). Thus the total iodin content was somewhat less than half of that of the official Tincture of Iodin (Tr. Iodi), which contains 7 gm. of free iodin and 5 gm. of potassium iodid to each 100 c.c. The official tincture, diluted one-half, therefore, would be essentially equivalent to the Burnham preparation, both being miscible with water. The Burnham Soluble Iodine Company objected to the conclusions drawn, from this analysis, but admitted the correctness of the analysis itself.
Any one who gathered his first knowledge of the subject from the Burnham advertising might readily infer that no soluble iodin had been known prior to Burnham’s Soluble Iodine. This, of course, is not the case; the method of producing a solution of iodin by the use of an iodid has long been known.
The following statement is not only obviously untrue but also nonsensical:
“In all the history of iodin medication, covering a period of laboratory research of many years duration, every effort to produce a free iodin, prior to the evolution of Burnham’s Soluble Iodine, was attended by failure.”