Galenic Preparations

Galenic Preparations, products of processing medicinal (vegetable, mineral, or animal) raw materials, mostly by mechanical operations, with the aim of giving medicinal substances a specific medicinal form. Galenic preparations are named after Claudius Galen, who studied and described all the known methods of preparation and application of medicinal substances at that time. In his works, Galen mentions the following medicinal forms: powders, pills, boluses, cakes, soaps, ointments, plasters, mustard plasters, collections, infusions, decoctions, solutions, mixtures, plant juices, fatty vegetable oils, essential oils, wines, medicinal vinegars, vinegar-honeys, compresses, wet dressings, hot applications, tisanes, several antidotes, theriacs and other mixtures, which include not only vegetable but also animal and mineral substances. These medicinal forms were prepared by cutting, pounding, grinding, infusing or decocting with water, pressing, melting over a weak fire, etc. Against the drugs used by Galen and his followers, Paracelsus (1491-1534) energetically rebelled in the 16th century, completely rejecting all the ideas and teachings of Galen in medicine and, in turn, placing metallic preparations first as therapeutic agents. In the struggle that arose between Paracelsus and his disciples (Paracelsists) and the followers of Galen (Galenists), the term "Medicamenta galenica" was first used to distinguish the old preparations from the new ones proposed by Paracelsus and called "Medicamenta spagirica" (Greek, spao- I draw out and ageiro- I gather). At first, all preparations made by Paracelsists from plants in the medicinal forms proposed by Paracelsus himself—tinctures, extracts, and elixirs—were also classified as spagiric. But the term Medicamenta spagirica comparatively soon went out of use, while the name G. p. gained general acceptance and wide distribution, so that in the end, all drugs, even those prepared according to Paracelsus in the form of tinctures, extracts, and elixirs, as well as the drugs of Arab physicians (Galenists)—syrups and confectiones—were included in the group of G. p. The number of G. p. thus gradually multiplied; it is still growing, but at the same time, a large number of chemical preparations—Chemicalia (according to modern German terminology)—are already counted among the drugs. So-called dosage forms (tablets, capsules, etc.) the French also classified as Pharmacie Galenique. The name "New Galenica" came to be commonly applied to such newer preparations as digalen, gitalen, dignorm, adonilen, etc. Thus, under the heading G. p. at the present time, an enormous number of various medicinal preparations are included, which, in addition to the above, are characterized by the uncertainty and little study of their chemical composition and the relatively easy changeability during storage. Therefore, to determine the authenticity and quality of G. p., they are guided mainly by the physical properties of the preparations—color, transparency, consistency, odor, specific gravity, weight of dry residue, etc.—and only partly by chemical data or biological properties. In the technique of preparing G. p. some improvements have been made in the last 40-50 years: the percolation method for extracting tinctures and infusions, evaporation and drying of extracts in vacuum apparatuses, the use of dialysis to separate the therapeutically active parts of the preparation from the ballast. For the constancy of composition of G. p., the quality of raw materials, the unity of prescriptions and manufacturing methods are of decisive importance; therefore, these data are given by different pharmacopoeias and, in addition, are indicated in special international agreements concluded in Brussels in 1902 and 1925. Modern medicine, although it strives to use pure chemical preparations for the treatment of patients, the action of which on the body can be studied more quickly and easily, nevertheless still cannot do without G. p., because in many cases their therapeutic action is determined not by one particular active principle, but is composed of a whole sum of pharmacologically active substances. The very term G. d. at the present time has already lost its clarity, since under the heading Galenica a large number of medicinal preparations and forms have been included, which have nothing in common with the era of Galen either in time of their appearance or in the idea of preparation.