Extemporaneous preparations from the past

Abstract

Compounding involves the preparation, packaging and labelling of a drug specifically for a particular patient according to a medical prescription. Until the mid-1900s, the compounding of such 'ondemand' pharmaceutical preparations, also known as extemporaneous preparations, was the basis of pharmacy. In Italy, in 1580, descriptive catalogues and standards for quality and uniformity of pharmacy formulas for pharmaceutical preparations were compiled. These became known as the 'pharmacopoeia' . In the 1930s and 1940s, about 60% of all drugs were compounded. However, in the 1960s, manual preparation declined. 2 The objectives of the study were to demonstrate different methods of preparations of various drug formulations irrespective of the active ingredients used and to compile a List of extemporaneous preparations that were compounded between the years 1955 to 1965.