the P^oyal College of Physicians. 243 



have been /jypomuriate. So, too, mercury is hydrar gyrus, 

 (a word l)y the by neither Greek nor Latin, though pre- 

 tending to be the former), while silver is argeiiium, plain 

 Latin, 



But perhaps tliis new language is universal and permanent. 

 The change, though inconvenient, is to be made once for all- 

 Alas! so far from it, that, whereas the old Pharmacopcieia 

 had lasted fv">r centuries iti every corner of our own islands 

 at least, and been every where read and every where under- 

 stood ; now, in the progressive slate of chemistry, we every 

 year are proving that our last year's ideas were false. Hence 

 every year is to chanee our Pharmacopccia with our alma- 

 nacs; and what is to the full as bad, our three principal schools 

 of medicine have each their own nomenclature, fitted, I sup- 

 pose, like their almanac, to their own latitude; and Dublin 

 and Edinburgh and London are nearly unintelligible to 

 each other; so that an unfortunate patient who wishes that 

 an English apothecary should make up his Irish or Scotch 

 prescription, must send him a book to read it by, or it 

 might as well be written in the ancient Oghan), or dictated 

 in Erse by Ossian the son of Fuigal. 



All this is mighty ridiculous : still, if it were only ridi- 

 culous, I should not have thought your publication a proper 

 vehicle for animadversion on it, but have left it to the 

 theatres and ballad-mongers to laugh at it as it well deserves. 

 But, sir, when we reflect that in its consequences the lives 

 of every one of us, and of course the lives of those the most 

 dear to us, are in a thousand v/ays involved ; that to the 

 anxiety of sickness is to be superadded the doubt and dread 

 lest medical aid should be in fact a worse enemy than the 

 disease it professes to combat ; and this evil invades the 

 world under the specious garb of improved science, — it be- 

 comes not unworthy of the Philosophical Magazine to in- 

 terest itself in the cause of humanity, and to endeavour to 

 raise amongst us a cry which may reach the cars of the com- 

 mon father of his people, and induce him to withdraw the 

 permission he has given for these pernicious and multiplied 

 changes. J do know, that when \\\i Jiut was obtained for 

 this newest change in the London Pharmacopoeia, his own 

 native good sense induced him to observe that he thought it 

 all nonsense. Had a friendly voice then been raised to state 

 that it was not merely harmless follv, but folly replete with 

 danger, I doubt not that he would have rejected the new 

 edition of nonsense, and kept the College at least to- their 

 older names, which, by the habit of twenty years or more, 

 had lust much of the power of doing mischief. That much 

 O 2 serious 



