Talk:Chlorodyne

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Discussion for: Chlorodyne • View • Links • Related changes

Use this page for verification notes, disputes, and action items. Keep narrative content on the article.

Page scope

The page treats chlorodyne only so far as the formularies and analyses cited show cannabis in it or not: the printed formulas, the official tinctures meant as its equivalent, and the dispute over the original.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Sources

• British Pharmaceutical Codex 1907, pp. 203, 248, 1180 (Wellcome scan; p. 248 from the page image).
• Martindale, Extra Pharmacopoeia, 4th ed. (1885), p. 125 (Wellcome scan).
• British Pharmacopoeia 1914, p. 401 (Wellcome scan).
• National Formulary 1888, pp. 87–88 (Wellcome scan).
• Oleson, Secret Nostrums and Systems of Medicine, 5th ed. (1894), preface and pp. 42–43 (Wellcome scan; p. 42 from the page image). The 1890 edition (Wellcome b21009387) has the same text on the same pages.
• King's American Dispensatory (1898), transcription on Henriette's Herbal Homepage.
• Wellcome Collection catalogue record of a Davenport advertisement, dated by the cataloguer to [1898].

Is it cannabis?

Printed formulas for chlorodyne contain tincture of Cannabis indica or of Indian hemp (BPC 1907; two formulas in Oleson 1894). Rohnert, reprinted by Oleson, says it was never proved that Browne's original did. None of these sources prints a recipe by Collis Browne himself. The British Pharmacopoeia tincture of 1885 that the BPC calls "an equivalent for chlorodyne" has no hemp.

Left out

• Collis Browne's biography, the date of invention and the history of the trade mark: not covered by these sources.
• Riboulet-Zemouli and Allué Creus (2024) call chlorodyne "an infamous hemp-containing chloral hydrate preparation". The formularies cited here make chlorodyne with chloroform, not chloral (chloral is the base of Bromidia), so that sentence is not used.