the 



journal of Pharmacology, 



Devoted to the Advances Made in Materia Medica in its Branches. 



Pharmacy, Pharmacognosy, Chemistry, Botany, Pharmaco- 



Dynamics, Therapeutics and Toxicology. 



Published for the Alumni Association of the College of Pharmacy of the City of New York, 

 by The New Era Printing Company, Lancaster, Pa. 



Vol. V. 



SEPTEMBER, 1898. 



No. 9. 



ft (Comparison of the English and German Works on the 

 Genera of Plants, with Special Reference to the 

 United States Pharmacopoeia. 



BOTANICAL 



By Professor H. H. Rusby, M.D. 



[Read at the Baltimore Meeting of the American Pharmaceutical Association, 1898.] 



The importance of system and consistency in such works as the Phar- 

 macopoeia has always received recognition through the selection by their 

 compilers of authorities or codes by reference to which doubtful or disputed 

 questions are decided. In no department is there a more extensive demand 

 for such formal treatment than in regard to the two hundred or more spe- 

 cies of plants which enter into our official work. These were consistently 

 treated by the last committee of revision. The Rochester Code of Rules 

 for Nomenclature, the fruit of a decade of study and discussion, was 

 adopted, thus bringing the Pharmacopoeia into harmony with the National 

 Departments of Agriculture and Forestry, and with the American Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science and the Botanical Society of North 

 America. In classification the English authority, the Genera Plantarum 

 of Bentham and Hooker, was adopted, except as to cases of plain error. 

 It was recognized that this work was seriously faulty in some ways, and 

 that some of the changes necessary in following it were in themselves un- 

 desirable. Still, it appeared at the time to furnish the only complete work 

 of the kind available. Since then, the great German work, the Pflanzen- 

 familien of Engler and Prantl, has been practically completed, and it be- 

 comes a matter of necessity for the next Committee of Revision to consider 



