“Narkine is described as ‘an opium preparation from which all deleterious qualities have been eliminated’; an unsupportable claim, as all opiates and other hypnotics are essentially deleterious.”
The Tilden Company wrote to the Druggists Circular, stating that they guaranteed Narkine “to be absolutely free from coal-tar or opium derivatives,” yet the “literature” of the company describes it as
“a specially prepared product of opium devoid of the nauseating and disagreeable properties of this drug, yet possessing the anodyne and soporific principles of same in the highest degree.”
To remove from opium all its derivatives and yet retain the anodyne and soporific principles attached to nothing in particular, indicates a degree of pharmaceutical skill seldom attained. One is irresistibly reminded of the Cheshire cat in “Alice in Wonderland,” whose smile remained long after the cat had vanished.
The absurdity of the thing, however, has apparently not occurred to many physicians, for these disembodied spirits of the pharmacologic world are evidently being prescribed.
The Druggists Circular is to be congratulated on exposing this latest pharmaceutical freak. It does so in a rather striking manner by means of photographic reproductions of the claims of the Tilden Company.—(From The Journal A. M. A., Oct. 24, 1908.)
PAPINE
A Disguised Morphin Solution
To the thinking physician it should be evident that a preparation containing morphin must possess not only all of the valuable properties of this drug, but also all of the objectionable ones. There are still some physicians, apparently, who give credence to the assertions of the manufacturers concerning the morphin preparation from which, it is claimed, all of the undesirable morphin effects have been removed. The following query from a correspondent illustrates this fact: