Saccharin, as it has been happily named, is, in chemical language, orthosulphaminbenzoic acid. The name is based on the most important physical quality—the sweetness—but it is an acid, and combines with bases to form salts. Thus it displaces carbonic anhydride from its combination with sodium, and forms sodium ortho-sulphaminbenzoate. As it is more soluble in this form, the taste is sweeter. Internally it may be prescribed in the form of powder, or mixed in any food or drink requiring the addition of sweet, and sub-cutaneously it can be injected in solution in combination with sodium bicarbonate. The dose ranges from 5 grains to Э j, or more as required.

Actions and Uses

Saccharin is not sugar, although one of the sweetest substances in nature. It is an antiseptic of considerable power. In the proportion 0·16 per 100 it notably diminishes the activity of the ferment of beer. In a mixture of saccharin (0·32 per 100) and of urine in equal proportions no amraoniacal decomposition occurred for seven days. It retards the activity of the gastric and pancreatic ferments, and it has an inhibiting influence on some organisms, but it does not affect the powers of the spirillum of cholera and other pathogenic organisms. According to Paschkis, the intravenous injection in dogs of a four-per-cent solution is without influence on the blood pressure or on the action of the heart. According to Aduccoand Mosso, Salkowski, Paschkis, and others, it is comparatively innocuous in its action on the system, and passes out unchanged by the urine. It does not modify the action of some active agents with which it may be combined: thus saccharin-strychnine and saccharin-cocaine have the effects of the bases. The taste of certain medicaments—as quinine, salicin, tincture of chloride of iron, antipyrin, copaiba and sandalwood oils, guaiacum, hydrastis, and cascara sagrada—is successfully covered by saccharin without impairing any of their qualities (Gans).

The flatulent colic of children is, in my experience, often admirably relieved by the giving of saccharin in two to five grain doses after meals. The intestinal pain due to the sudden formation of gas, and coming on in two to four hours after meals, may be prevented by the timely exhibition of this remedy. In these cases the remedy may be administered in any suitable food, or be given at such time after meals as may be necessary to secure its admission to the small intestine.

It has also proved beneficial in catarrh of the duodenum, catarrh of the bile-ducts, and in sick headache due to intestinal indigestion.

It has been utilized as a dietetic agent and substitute for cane-sugar in the treatment of diabetes. The mistake is often made of too lavish use of the substitute, so that it comes to pall on the taste, and a disagreeable, mawkish sense of oversweetness remains constantly in the mouth. There is reason to believe that saccharin does good somewhat as a remedy for the hepatic disturbance which underlies the production of glycosuria.

In the experimental trials with saccharin it was found that, given by the mouth, the tendency of the urine to decompose was greatly lessened, and hence it has been proposed to employ it as a remedy in catarrh of the bladder and of the pelvis of the kidney. In some cases good results have followed this practice.

Authorities referred to:

Aducco et Mosso. Quoted by Dujardin-Beaumetz, Diet.

Gans, Dr. Edgar. Berliner klin. Woch., No. 13, S. 281. Virchow und Hirsch's Jahresbericht for 1890.

Paul, Constantin. Nouvelles recherches sur l'action de la saccharin. Paschkis, Dr. Wiener Wochen. Virchow u. Hirsch, 1890. Salkowski, Dr. Virchow's Archiv, Band cxx, p. 325.