{[ 264 ] 
LVI. Mr. Hume on Emetic Tartar. 
To Mr. Tilloch. 
Sir, — ly addition to what I have already communicated * to 
you, in regard to my methods of preparing emetic tartar, I beg 
to submit to your readers a copy of a letter which I sent, above 
two years ago, to the President of the Royal College af Physi- 
cians, London. 
T his I hope will serve as a protection against the officious 
and, I may say, illiberal, intrusion.of one, who seems still de- 
termined to injure my professicnal reputation and, consequently, 
the welfare of my family. 
I have said methods, because, by more ways than one, I have 
effected the decomposition, and have proved that an oxide of 
antimony, fit for the purpose, can be obtained directly from the 
common black sulphuret either by means of wiérie acid alone, 
properly diluted with water, or the ingredients themselves by 
which this acid is prepared, together with the necessary quantity 
of water. 
The process which I sent to you, and which you have already 
admitted into the Philosophical Magazine, has been supported 
by the most ample and favourable testimonies, both by manu- 
facturers and others who. are competent to judge of its merits; 
I have therefore no inducement at present to recommend any 
change in that prescription. 
I take this occasion to declare that, excepting the preparation 
of the medicine in question, the tartarized antimony, I had less 
to do with the changes that have been made either in the for- 
mer volume or in the editio nova of the Pharmacopceia than 
may be supposed; I had no direct communication with the 
committee; nor do I know, even at this moment, how and of 
whom this committee was composed, whether it was open to all 
the members of the College, or secret and select; consequently 
I had no opportunity of preventing the material error (tum cola) 
which had unfortunately slipped into the. fouls for antimonium 
tartarizatum, 
The letter, of which I shall subjoin a copy, was never meant 
to be kept as a secret, further than to be presented /irsé to the 
consideration of the committee, which, as I understood, had been 
appointed to reform the Pharmacopceia of the London College. 
This letter, if admitted into your pages, will serve as a registry, 
notwithstanding all that has been asserted by one who has writ- 
ten so much and done so little, that the process which the Col- 
lege has now abandoned might have been profitably modified ; 
et Plnlosophical Magazine, vol. xlv. p. 301. 
that 
