THE AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACY. 
369 
H. Martin, W. H. N aylor, Maben, Abrabam, and ^Reynolds were subsequently 
appointed a committee, with power to add to their number, to compile the formulary; 
so that it will be seen that in England some practical effort is at last to be made 
to grapple with this serious evil. We have every confidence that the subject 
will receive equally careful consideration on the part of our own delegates, and if 
they merely succeed in devising some means whereby the growth of the 
pernicious system can be checked in this Southern Britain, the conference will 
not have met in vain. The fact that, in the course of his address at the last 
annual meeting of the Victorian branch of the British Medical Association, the 
retiring president, Dr. Henry, unequivocally condemned the prevalence of these 
“ wholesale prescriptions, leads us to hope that the medical profession in these 
colonies are awaking to a sense of their deep responsibility in this matter, and 
it might not be amiss if some effort were made by the conference to enlist 
their active support in the cause of reform. From their kindred nature, 
medicine and pharmacy ought ever to be united in friendly co-operation, and 
never was that co-operation more urgently called for than in combating a 
practice which is so inimical to the best interests of both professions. 
M&fes %&xxKnvt{x+ 
An American contemporary ventures the opinion that if the specially-prepared 
specifics, cordials, digesters, emulsions, syrups, and concentrated essences “ prepared 
by a process known only to the manufacturer, especially for physicians’ use,*’ 
increase in number and variety in the next ten or fifteen years as they have 
in the last five years, it will only be necessary for the physician to designate 
the disease, and you have the prescription already compounded “ in a regular 
hand-me-down style, without the trouble of soiling your hands or cleaning 
measures.” 
How Saccharine was Discovered. — In an interview with a representative 
of the American Analyst Dr. Constantine Fahlberg gave the following account 
of the circumstances under which he discovered saccharine : — “ One evening I 
was so interested in my laboratory that I forgot about supper until quite late, 
and then rushed off for a meal without stopping to wash my hands. I sat 
down, broke a piece of bread, and put it to my lips. It tasted unspeakably 
sweet. I did not ask why it was so, probably because I thought it was some 
cake or sweetmeat. I rinsed my mouth with water, and dried my moustache 
with my napkin, when, to my surprise, the napkin tasted sweeter than the bread. 
Then I was puzzled. I again raised my goblet, and, as fortune would have it, 
applied my mouth where my fingers had touched it before. The water seemed 
syrup. It flashed upon me that I was the cause of this singular universal sweet- 
ness, and I accordingly tasted the end of my thumb, and found that it surpassed 
any confectionery I had ever eaten. I saw the whole thing at a glance. I had 
discovered or made some coal-tar substance which out-sugared sugar. I dropped 
my supper, and ran back to the laboratory. There, in my excitement, I tasted the 
contents of every beaker and evaporating dish on the table. Luckily for me none 
contained any corrosive or poisonous liquid. One of them contained an impure 
solution of saccharine. On this I worked, then, for weeks and months until I 
had determined its chemical composition, its characteristics, and reactions, and 
the best modes of making it scientifically and commercially.” 
In an article on “Pharmaceutical Ethics,” in the Pharmaceutical Becord , 
Mr. Alfred H. Mason, F.C.S., exposes the absurdity of the outcry against 
counter prescribing” as follows : — “ I remember once being in the Isle of Man 
