Drug Lore

Indispensable to the dispenser, be he doctor or druggist, is the dispensatory. The archaic name is appropriate: last week appeared the 25th edition in 122 years of The Dispensatory of the United States of America (Lippincott; $25), a strapping oldster of 8 Ibs. 2 oz.

Skillfully compounded in its 2,139 pages are all the officially approved drugs listed in the U.S., British and International Pharmacopoeias, plus the permissible "nonofficial" remedies. It takes 80 pages of index merely to list the items from acacia (the pillroller's gummy old standby) to zygadenus (a plant poisonous to grazing animals).

Of the 500-odd items added since the last (1947) edition, most are complex organic substances like the hormones ACTH, cortisone, hydrocortisone, aldosterone, prednisone; peace-of-mind preparations such as Rauwolfia derivatives and chlorpromazine; assorted sedatives for a restless age; and a slew of new antibiotics. Penicillin in 137 varieties rates 28 pages. Medicinal radioisotopes, included for the first time, take four pages. Anti-histaminics, just becoming popular in 1947, have multiplied like rabbits.

Dropped because they are outmoded are another 500 items. Mostly herbals, these included cypripedium (lady's slipper), once used as a sedative in hysteria and neuralgia; diabetes weed, and corn smut (derived from a fungus), which stimulated uterine contractions in childbirth. Carried over from edition to edition, of course: quack grass.

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