State of Pharmacy in France. 251 



all my objections to this Code des Medicamens, I consider it 

 as a libel upon the as;e and country which produced it. It 

 is tediously minute in bad directions for bad preparations, and 

 where minuteness would have been advantageous it is brief; 

 and if it should escape the severe fate which it merits, the least 

 that can be done is to dispose of it according to its direc- 

 tions for the syrup of sulphuret of potash, " II faut le con- 

 server couvert d'un papier noir, pour 



qu'il soit inaccessible a la lumifere." 



Art. 111. Sotne Observations relatins to the secretin^ Power 

 of Animals, in a Letter addressed to the Editor of the 

 Journal of the Royal Institution. By A. P. W. Philip, 

 M.D. F.R.S.E., <§T. 



Sir, Worcester, May I, 1820. 



As you did me the honour to publish in the fifteenth Number 

 of the Quarterly Journal, a paper relating to the agency of gal- 

 vanism in the animal economy, in which I stated the reasons 

 which seem to prove the identity of this power and the ner^^ous 

 influence, I trouble you with the following observations, con- 

 nected with the same subject, to which I shall be much obliged 

 to you, if they appear to deserve it, to give a place in the next 

 number of that Journal. 



Of the circumstances which tend to establish the identity of 

 the nervous influence and galvanism, the strongest appears to 

 be, the due performance of secretion by means of the latter, after 

 the nervous influence is to such a degree withdrawn from se- 

 creting surfaces by dividing their nerves, that without this aid, 

 they are no longer capable of their function. This argument of 

 course, wholly rests on the supposition, that when we divide the 

 nerves, we destroy the power of a secreting surface; not by any 

 injury done to it through the medium of its wounded nerves, 

 but by preventing the supply of something on which its secreting 

 power depends. The consideration of this question is the ob- 

 ject of the following paper. 



