242 On the new Nomenclature adopted by 



wouid be a mass of inextricable confusion. It will also 

 happen, that as science advances, snbstances anciently im- 

 perfectly understood will often be transferred from one class 

 to another : but this is totally different from clianging their 

 names, which it is almost always useless and otten dan- 

 gerous to do. 



Will any mnn assert, that a single physician or even 

 apothecarv did not know the composition and virtues of 

 corrosive sublimate and calomel to the full as well under 

 those names as under the new appellations of muriate and 

 submuriate of mercury ? But under the former nomen- 

 clature no mistake could well be committed : — under the 

 new ones, let him who reads tremble Icsi the haste of the 

 prescriber or ignorance of the compounder should pour 

 down the throat of his child inevitable death, instead of a 

 most salutary medicine. So paregoric elixir was known 

 to every village nurse, nor could ignorance itself confound 

 it with laudanum : but now they are both lincturcB op'd, 

 and onlv a third word, marked in general by its single ini- 

 tial C, which in hasty or careless writing may easily be 

 mistaken for a flourish of the pen, distinguishes a medicine 

 of drops from one of spoonsful, and discriminates to the 

 apothecary's boy the quieter of a cough, from the quietus 

 at once of cough and life. 



When Linnseus formed his admirable system of botany, it 

 was necessary for him to remove from their former arrange- 

 ment many plants, and reclass them by his improved me- 

 thod. Yet he too was sometimes wanton in the exercise of 

 his power, and without necessity changed several names. 

 Was it necessary, or useful, for the medical man to give up 

 the trivial and universally known names of plants for the 

 new boianical ones ? Will an emetic work the better for 

 the infusion of anlhemis nobilis being ordered instead of 

 chamomile flowers ? Is gum arabic harder to remember than 

 7nimuia niloiica P which by the by is inaccurate, as being 

 tJie name of the tree producing the gum, not of the gum 

 itself. 



Numerous instances as strong as these might be adduced 

 of the foolishness of these changes, but 1 think the above 

 may suffice. 



It were something (though indeed but very little) if in the 

 pedantry of Greek names, Greek were adhered to; but in 

 this Babylonish dialect we are presented vvith a heteroge- 

 neous mixtuie of Greek and Latin. We have hyperoxi" 

 genated muriatic acid (tremendous to pronounce!) and in 

 the next line ^wZ^muriate of mercury. It should at least 



hav« 



