New Publications. 199 



voiced there from l^d. to 3d. per lb. It is intended and used for 

 powdering, colour being given to it by turmeric, &c. 



The article called oxide of zinc on the English labels, is generally 

 carbonate of zinc, being imported at a price which precludes the pos- 

 sibility of honest preparation. 



All that is received under the name of precipitate sulphur (or 

 " lac sulphui'," as the merchants commonly term it), except when 

 it is expressly ordered from an honourable manufacturer, contains 

 from 80 to 95 per cent, of sulphate of lime. 



Opium is often invoiced at one-third the value of good quality, 

 and is found, upon examination, not to be worth even that. The 

 same may be said of scammony. 



Most of the foreign extracts are not what they profess to be, and 

 cannot be relied upon in the treatment of disease. 



The salts of quinine, morphine, and all the more costly chemicals, 

 are greatly adultei^ated. 



We are informed, by the agent of an English manufacturer of 

 chemicals, extracts, and many other preparations used in medicine, 

 that it is a regular and systematic business, carried on by his princi- 

 pal and others in his line, to make articles for the American market 

 of different qualities, one for the Atlantic cities, and another, very 

 much inferior, " for the West," meaning thereby our Western 

 States. He gives us, for instance, the following quotations : — 

 " Compound extract of colocynth, 9s. 6d. ; do. for the West, 5s." — 

 the latter, as we are allowed to infer, containing no scammony at all, 

 only the poorest sort of aloes, and but little, if any, colocynth or ex- 

 tract from it; — " blue pill, 3s. 9d. ; for the West, Is. 8d." 



Is it wonderful that such uncommon doses as we hear of are 

 taken, and indeed required, at the West, and that disappointment is 

 every day experienced by physicians in the action of medicines ? 

 And these examples are but a few out of many that might be given. 



This circular has been addressed as a memorial to the Legislature 

 of New York, praying that a law may be enacted, declaring that all 

 imported articles intended for medical use, which may appear to the 

 proper Custom-House officers to be spurious, counterfeit, or adulte- 

 rated, shall be subject to competent inspection, and if found to be of 

 base character, confiscated and destroyed. — {American Journal, Se- 

 cond Sorids, No. 13, January 1848, p. 139.) 



NEW PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. 



1. Physical Geography. By Mary Somerville. In two volumes, with 

 a Portrait. John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1848. Two very delight- 

 ful volumes, from the pen of the celebrated Mary Somerville, the moat 

 diHtinguighed fem,ale cultivator of Physical Science of our time. 



