ANATOMICAL ATLAS 



OF 



VEGETABLE POWDERS. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The ever-increasing substitution of machinery for manual labour, 

 and the facility with which water, gas, and steam power can 

 be utilised in the preparation of pharmaceutical products, have 

 considerably modified the conditions under which the profession 

 of pharmacy is now exercised. The pharmacist living at a distance 

 trom great centres or not having such power at his command 

 is often compelled to purchase various products from special 

 laboratories working under favourable conditions. As a conse- 

 quence, large manufacturing firms have come into existence, 

 capable of supplying the pharmacist with many preparations 

 equal to or even better than those that he could produce in his 

 own laboratory. 



But if the pharmacist is to entrust the manufacture of such 

 preparations to industrial firms he must at least possess sufficient 

 knowledge of them to enable him to identify them and detect 

 sophistication. Among such products or preparations the vegetable 

 powders occupy a prominent place. 



Some of these powders, although used in pharmacy, are im- 

 portant chiefly as dietetic articles, such as the starches and flours ; 

 these may be called alimentary powders. Others, again, have a 

 more decided medicinal value, and these may be called medicinal 

 or officinal powders. 



The starches, as their name indicates, consist almost entirely 

 of starch grains, and seldom contain any of the debris of the 

 cellular tissue in which they were contained. The flours and meals, 

 on the other hand, especially those derived from cereals, have 

 a more complex composition. Wheat flour, for instance, consists 

 principally of starch, but it also contains the organic and inorganic 

 constituents of the endosperm, as well as fragments of the seed- 

 coats and pericarp of the grain. The identification of the dears 



