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XLIII. On the new Nomenclahire adopted by the Royal 

 College of Physicians in the netu Edition of the London 

 Pkarmaccpccia. 



To Mr. Tllloch. 



Sir, xxnothkr Pharmacoposla has lately received the 

 ro\al sanction, and our physicians are again to learn to 

 write a new language, and our apothecaries to read it. The 

 names which twenty years aso were chosen as sonorous 

 and significant, are now discovered to he harbarous and false ; 

 and Grceksyllables are accumulated in yet m^)re formidable 

 array, to the terror of old practitioners and the unspeakable 

 happiness of young ones, who " mouthing out (not) Ho- 

 mer's Greek like thunder," will with little labour and no 

 genius fill the vulgir world with wonder and awe at their 

 astonishing knowledg;c. 



This rage for innovation, thi> contemptible and pedantic 

 folly of substituting words for things, ^as if in a new word 

 there could be a magic virtue not existing in an old one, 

 and that the getting by heart a bead-roll of new appellations 

 could really give a new insight into the properties of the 

 things spoken of, — came to us, as many useless and many 

 mischievous fashions have come, from France ; and we have 

 adopled like plain fools, what they proposed like acute 

 rogues. It was their policy to subvert all former order, to 

 confound men's ideas for a time, and then to substitute new- 

 ones; for this purpose the changing or the boundaries and the 

 names of theiT provinces, the adoption of new weights and 

 measures', with new and barbarous naincs pretending to be 

 half Geek half Latin, but in truth neither the one nor the 

 other; for this purpose, these violent innovations with 

 many othersjof the ^ame sort had their use. But for us, 

 whose medical system was to remain unaltered, — for us, in 

 a science whtrc certainty and stability of names are of the 

 highest consequence, to adopt without a shadow of necessity, 

 or the least prospect of advantage, this wild hist of change, 

 has, I own, always appeared to me quite astonishing; and the 

 more, as knowing the real science and sound sense 04" the 

 late sir George Baker, under whose presidency this baleful 

 innovation was first adopted by the London College of Phy- 

 sicians. 



There is no doubt that classification is of absolute neces- 

 sity in every science, particularly in natural history, che- 

 mistry, and medicine, where many different substances are 

 to be treated of. Without some arrantrtment, the whole 



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