Ammonium Aceticum

[acetate of ammonia, spirits of mindererus.]

A saturated mixture of carbonate of ammonia and acetic acid. To the acid we add ammonia as long as the acid will decompose it ; this is what we mean by saturation.

Pereira states that this salt was first introduced into the materia medica by Boerhaave in 1732, and was afterward employed by Min- dererus, a Scotch physician. Dr. Peters shows that this is a mistake. The salt was first made known to the medical public by Raymond Minderer, a physician in the city of Augsburg, Bavaria, in 1621, but it did not receive much attention until Boerhaave noticed it in his Elements of Chemistry, 1732. It was first noticed in the Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia in 1756.

It is supposed to be a cooling medicine which has a slight tendency to increase the cutaneous exhalation and the urinary secretions. Wibmer experimented with it, but experienced neither increase of the cutaneous exhalations, nor of the urinarv secretions. It caused headache and disturbed his digestion. Dr. Cullen says: "I have known four ounces of it taken at once, and soon after, four ounces more, without any sensible effect."

It is used by old-school physicians as a cooling mixture in fevers and inflammatory conditions of the system generally, and it has been introduced by the editors of the Am. Jour, of Horn, in the materia medica part of their publication, but I am utterly unable to say what therapeutic principle it represents there. All the cases which are related in this article as illustrating the action of the acetate of ammonia, are cases extracted from alloeopathic works, where the drug was given in enormous doses in accordance with the peculiar theory or notion of the prescribing physician, and where one of our many specific remedies for inflammation or nervous irritation is much more clearly indicated than the spirits of Mindererus.

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