SYRUPS are medicinal solutions of sugar, either in water alone, as in simple syrup, or in liquids charged with some peculiar principle of an active kind, such as senna or buckthorn; or merely grateful from its colour or fragrance, or both, such as syrup of violets. These must be of a proper consistence, either by having a suitable quantity of sugar added to the water at first, or by subsequent evaporation of the super fluous water. The former is the preferable mode, as the syrup keeps better. The purest and most thoroughly refined sugar should be employed, and generally in the proportion of two parts of sugar to one of fluid. Less sugar is needed where add syrups are to be made, as in syrup of mulberries, and still less where vinous syrups are made. When made, the syrup is to be preserved in closely-stopped bottles, and kept in a cool place, the temperature of which never exceeds 55° Fahr.; but, with every precaution, fermentation is apt to occur, par ticularly if warm or boiling water has been employed to extract the vegetable principle, when cold water is most appropriate : so also with the syrup of poppies, which, when given in a state of fermentation to children, too often aggravates the disorder of the bowels it W8.3
intended to alleviate. To counteract the tendency to fermentation, rectified spirit is enjoined to be added to the sugar—an expensive proceeding, quite needless when cold water only is used in the pre ceding stages. When too little sugar is used, fermentation is still more apt to occur ; when too much, the excess crystallises. Syrups are more used for their fragrance or colour than for their medicinal properties, which few possess to any important extent, except syrup of poppies, the cause of a larger mortality among children, especially of the poor, than any other drug :—see Christison on 'Poisons,' and Reports of the Registrar-General, almost weekly, especially lith Nov., 1860. The number of syrups might well be diminished.