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BRITISH PHARMACEUTICAL CONFERENCE, NORWICH. 



lees proportion of 1,510 grains in the imperial gallon. Assuming 

 the flow of the spring to be as stated, about seventy gallons per 

 hour (certainly no vast quantity), the amount of chloride of 

 calcium outpoured in the course of twenty-four hours would be 

 equivalent to 363 pounds. No other example is known of 

 water so rich in this mineral constituent. 



A propos to this subject, I must draw your attention for a 

 moment to the volume on the table, an essay on water, in 

 which that ancient element is scrutinized and considered in 

 every possible way. This fine work, a quarto of 400 pages, 

 emanates from a Brazilian, a member by examination of the 

 Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, Senhor Antonio Alves 

 A. Alves Fer- Ferreira, of Kio de Janeiro. 



Experiments on the therapeutic action of drugs, to be of real 

 value must be carried on with so many precautions, so much 

 patience, and attention to so many collateral circumstances, that 

 practitioners of medicine as well as pharmacists may well be 

 indebted for information such as that communicated by Dr. 

 John Harley in his Lectures on the action and uses of Conium, 

 Belladonna, and Hyoscyamus. Dr. Harley's experiments on 

 Coriium seem to me a model of careful therapeutic research. 

 The results are of great interest, proving conclusively that the 

 drug is an active medicinal agent, but one of which the pharma- 

 ceutical preparations have been so defective and uncertain that 

 the efficacy of the medicine had come to be regarded as very 

 questionable. The dried leaf of hemlock was found by Dr. 

 Harley to be of little if any value ; the tincture whether made 

 from leaf or fruit, to be inert (except from its alcohol), and the 

 extract to be so weak in conia, that it required to be given in 

 doses of thirty to forty grains to produce the least effect. The 

 only preparation which retains the active principle of the drug, 

 in sufficient quantity, is the preserved juice, given in the dose of 

 from two to eight drachms, is a safe and valuable medicine. As 

 Belladonna, to Belladonna, Dr. Harley considers that its medicinal powers are 

 wholly resident in atropine, a substance which I, as a druggist, 

 may remark is far more satisfactory to handle than a liquid like 

 conia, or a highly deliquescent solid such as hyoscyamine. Dr. 



Dr. John 

 Harley. 



Conium. 



