| Description Of Item | A cylindrical bottle with a wooden stopper containing Arsenicum Album, prepared by a homeopathic chemist Joseph James, Promenade Place, Cheltenham, was apprenticed to a homeopathic chemist called Edwin Wheeler and within a few years bought Mr Wheeler’s shop. He had worked for Arthur Guinness M.D. for a while and then he changed the name of the pharmacy to Joseph James M.P.S (Members of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, now is The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain) afterwards.
Arsenicum Album are also called White Arsenic and Arsenious Oxide. The greater part of the white arsenic of commerce is derived from the roasting of natural arsenides of iron, nickel and cobalt. The process is conducted in a reverberatory furnace, and the volatilized substance is condensed in specially arranged long chimneys. When arsenious oxide is condensed at a temperature of 400C., there is produced a transparent vitreous mass. When deposited at a temperature slightly less than that just given, it crystallizes in right rhombic prisms. This form is known as vitreous arsenic, and taking one part that was finely powdered to be boiled to complete solution in sixty parts of distilled water, and filtered. By the addition of distilled water, the filtrate is increased to ninety parts, and then ten parts of 95% alcohol are added. (Dr Joseph T. O'Conner, in the book of the American homoeopathic pharmacopoeia, 1883). |