THE NAMING OF LICENSED DRUGS
“Partly in order to help insure to licensees a market for their products after the war, in larger part inspired by the idea of encouraging the establishment of a permanent American industry in these important articles, the [Federal Trade] Commission wisely decided that American houses should be put on the same footing as competing foreign houses for after-the-war competition, by imposing on all licensees the obligation to use new official names for the articles, names which after the war will be open to all competitors, domestic and foreign.”[223]
The new American names are:
Arsphenamin[224] (contracted from the scientific name arsenphenolamin) for salvarsan, arsenobenzol, diarsanol, arsaminol.
Barbital (contracted from the scientific name diethyl-barbituric acid) for veronal.
Barbital-sodium (the sodium salt of barbital) for “veronal-sodium” and “medinal.”
Cinchophen for atophan or phenylcinchoninic acid (the U. S. P. IX name).
Procain for novocain hydrochlorid (from “pro” and “(co)caine”).
Procain nitrate for novocain nitrate.
EXAMINATION OF SYNTHETIC DRUGS
In testing chemically the products which had been submitted to the Federal Trade Commission, the aims were that the product should conform to a high degree of purity; at the same time the candidate for license should not be inflicted with undue hardships in making the product, such as an unnecessarily high degree of purity. It was insisted that the purity of the drugs should be equal to, if not greater than, that of the respective former German-made products, in order to uphold the name and reputation of the American manufacturers in the after-the-war competition. Consequently, in the chemical work the American product was always examined parallel with the German-made product, authentic samples of the latter of which the laboratory had in its possession. Whenever possible, the tests described in books of standards were carried out.
BARBITAL (VERONAL)
Barbital was introduced into medicine under the proprietary name “veronal,” and was manufactured in Germany by Friedr. Bayer & Co., Leverkusen, and E. Merck & Co., Darmstadt, Germany. Barbital is described in New and Nonofficial Remedies, 1919,[225] as diethylbarbituric acid (diethylmalonyl urea) having the formula:
It is official in the British Pharmacopeia under the name “barbitone,” and in the German Pharmacopeia as “acidum diethylbarbituricum.” Barbital “may be prepared by the interaction of esters of diethylmalonic acid with urea in the presence of metallic alcoholates.... It is also obtained by condensation of diethylcyanacetic ester with urea by means of sodium alcoholate.” Barbital is used in medicine chiefly as a hypnotic.