356 Analysis of Scientific Books. 
sity for something new, which exists somewhere in the College ; for 
after all, the present wines, which contain no wine, are as ob- 
jectionable as the former wines which do contain it. But the 
authors of the Pharmacopeia will probably tell us that it is com- 
piled exclusively for their own use and convenience; that they 
have nothing to do with the vulgar public; and hat if other people 
are unlearned enough to call things by their proper names, they 
regret their want of taste. ‘* We have thought it better,” it is 
said in the Preface to the Pharmacopeia, “to risk the accusation 
of barbarism than to admit terms of doubtful or uncertain significa- 
tion,” but in the cases before us certainty might have been attained 
without barbarism. “tn 
It is with unfeigned regret, that we find ArsENtc is still retained in 
the Pharmacopeia. We do not mean to say that it is useless as a 
medicine, but we do mean explicitly to assert that the mischief of 
retaining it is many thousand times greater than any benefit that in 
any possible case can be derived from its curative powers. The 
only plausible excuse for the sale of arsenic is its supposed use in 
medicine ; and as long as the College think it right to sanction its 
employment, so long may any person obtain it of any chemist, 
druggist, or apothecary—let it be struck out of the Pharmaco- 
peia, and its sale prohibited, and the numerous cases of accidental 
and intentional. poisonings with it would, at all events, be thrown off 
the shoulders that now alone must bear the responsibility. As to 
the cow-doctors and horse-leeches, (who by the way kill more cattle 
than they cure with their arsenical lotions,) we put them out of 
the question—and why then is arsenic, in every way the most dan- 
gerous, pernicious, portable, and certain of the poisons, the most 
easy of administration, and the most difficult of detection, suffered 
to be sold at every chandler’s shop in the kingdom? 
The College have given sub-nitrate of bismuth a place in their new 
Pharmacopeia—to this we haye no objection, though we find upon 
inquiry that the physicians of most practice never prescribe it: 
we must repeat that sulphate of quinine and hydriodate of potassa 
should not haye been neglected, for they, and especially the former, 
are in daily use. 
Among the preparations of iron we, in the first place, observe 
that Ferrum Ammoniatum and Liquor ferri Alcalini, useless, uncer- 
tain, and unchemical as they are, are retained; this is a pity, for 
all these pharmaceutical incumbrances are, in more ways than one, 
prejudicial ; the advantages of tartarized iron are frustrated by the 
directions for drying it; and our old acquaintance steel wine, the 
vinum ferri, has a most clumsy and inefficient substitute in a solu- 
tion of tartarized iron in proof spirit. Mr. Phillips is more tem- 
perate in his remarks upon this preposterous innovation (which 
has already excited infinite dismay and perplexity in many nurseries) 
than we feel inclined to be, and we shall therefore quote his 
