THE MICROSCOPE IN MODERN PHARMACY 



the courses of instruction in colleges of pharmacy have been based 

 upon scientific principles, especially in the department of botany, 

 with its various subdivisions, as vegetable materia medica, vegetable 

 pharmacography and powdered vegetable drugs. 



In the United States, Dr. Frederick Hoffmann was, perhaps, 

 among the very first to advocate the use of the compound microscope 

 in the examination of vegetable drugs and their adulterants. 1 Other 

 authorities have risen sporadically to recommend the use of this in- 

 strument. The important American work in the study of vegetable 



FIG. 4. Hooke's compound microscope (1665). 



A, diaphragm of tube, showing eye-lens at a and objective lens at b; B, body or 

 tube of instrument; c, spherical condenser; d, bull's-eye condenser; e, lamp;/, stage. 



drugs did not, however begin until many years after the work was 

 begun in Germany and France. Berg's excellent Atlas illustrating the 

 histology of drugs was published in 1865, and even at the present time 

 no English or American author has produced anything equal to it in 

 importance. 



Dr. Edson Bastin was among the first Americans to place pharma- 

 ceutical botany upon a more scientific basis, and he did much in a quiet 

 way to encourage work in the histological study of vegetable drugs. 

 He was a very thorough and conscientious worker. 

 1 "American Journal of Pharmacy,' 1 25; 45, 1853. 



