IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF LOZENGES OR TROCHES AND IN THE PRESERVATION OF ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE JUICES AND EXTRACTS FOR NUTRITIVE, MEDICINAL, AND OTHER PURPOSES
Year: 1874

page_text: -
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Edmund Adolphus Kirby at
the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on
the 25th March 1874..
I, EDMUND ADOLPHUS KIRBY, of St. Pancras, in the County of
Middlesex, do hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for
"IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF LOZENGES OR TROCHES AND IN THE
PRESERVATION OF ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE JUICES AND EXTRACTS FOR NUTRITIVE,
MEDICINAL, AND OTHER PURPOSES," to be as follows:-
My Invention relates to the manufacture of medicated and other
lozenges or troches, and troches, and to the preservation of animal and
vegatable juices and extracts for nutritive and other purposes..
The chief ingredients of lozenges of commerce and officinal troches as
hitherto made have usually been gum arabic or gum tragacanth and
sugar mixed, in the one case with fruit paste or essential oils, and in the
other with certain drugs in a state of powder made into a paste and
afterwards dried. The opacity of these- substances has served to cloak
adulteration with terra alba or plaster of Paris and other matters, all
more or less injurious to licalth, and in medicated lozenges, especially the

page_text: sugar, is unnecessary and often objectionable, and the medicaments are
moreover not dissolved, but being in the state of powder are merely held
together by the gums and sugar, and are therefore not administered in
a condition so favorable for their operation as when administered in
solution, which they virtually are in the lozenges of my Invention.
Now according to my Invention I produce lozenges which are neither
injurious or indigestible but on the contrary possess physical properties
which render them peculiarly adapted for medicinal purposes when
impregnated with medicinal or nutritive substances. The lozenges
become entirely dissolved in the mouth and converted into a bland
gelatinous fluid having agreeable demulcent properties, they are therefore
very valuable as a vehicle for medicaments adapted for the treatment of
affections of the mouth and throat, for which ordinary lozenges owing
to their hard and abrasive character are unsuitable.
t
The ingredients employed in the manufacture of these lozenges
consist principally of glycerine combined with gelatine or isinglass to
which albumen may be added. The combination of these substances
forms a vehicle far superior to gum and sugar for administering
medicinal and other substances, besides which, owing to the presence of
the glycerine, the lozenges posess the well known heating properties of
that substance.
In imparting medicinal or nutritive properties to these lozenges I am
enabled by the great solvent and antiseptic powers of the glycerine to
impart the desired property to a greater degree than could be effected
by the ordinary process of manufacture and to preserve the substances
in the most favorable condition for assimilation..
In making my improved lozenges or troches the medicinal nutritive
or flavoring substance prepared or extracted by any suitable known
process is concentrated if necessary and then dissolved in or mixed with
the glycerine to which a due proportion of gelatine or isinglass in a
liquid condition is then added.
In imparting a flavor of fruit to the lozenges the juices of the fresh
fruit would be employed instead of nastes as now wood for 11.