T, f, *hc > S' f : 
November, 1882. 
6>Oj CUrtf; (%$£) - 
THE CHEMIST AND DRUGGIST. 
53 
INDEX TO LITERARY CONTENTS. 
PAGE 
Leader— Secret Remedies 53 
Tiie Month 54 
Meetings— 
Tiie Pharmacy Board of Victoria — 55 
The Pharmaceutical Society of Victoria 55 
Sydney 55 
Definition of a New Species of Eucalyptus 56 
PAGE 
Examination of so-called Non-Alcoholic 
Wine 56 
The Cause of Consumption 56 
Botanical Excursion of Students 57 
Obituary — 
Mr. Henry James Long 58 
Professor Wohler 58 
PAGE 
Reminiscences of a Pharmacist 58 
Legal and Magisterial 59 
Testing of Benzoic Acid 59 
Lecture on Agriculture 59 
Correspondence 60 
Notes and Abstracts 60 
Cfj t ©fjemtet mxtf Druggist. 
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OF THE 
PHARMACEUTICAL SOCIETY OF VICTORIA, 
J- in aid of the BENEVOLENT FUND, will be held 
on WEDNESDAY, the 13th DECEMBER, 1882, at 
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BIRTH. 
Luke.— On the 12th October, at Shepparton, the wife of T. Luke, chemist, 
of a daughter. 
MARRIAGE. 
Treacy— Walton.— On the 27th September, at St. Francis’s, by Rev. M. 
M'lvenna, Richard N. D., eldest son of Martin Treacy, Esq., brewer, 
Wagga Wagga, late of Geelong, to Minnie, eldest daughter of the late 
George Walton, chemist, Geelong. 
SECRET REMEDIES. 
The Pharmaceutical Journal would have a line drawn be- 
tween secret remedies and specialties.” A “ specialty’’ 
is defined by that journal to be “ any substance or product 
which, prepared according to an officinal formula, realises 
an improvement in the art of pharmacy, and presents 
special therapeutic advantages.” “ A ‘ secret ’ remedy is 
any simple or compound substance or medicine employed 
in the treatment of disease, which has not received official 
sanction or publication, and which has not been prepared 
for a particular case upon a medical prescription.” One 
is, according to this author, the product of the professional 
skill and practical sense of the pharmacist, and is gener- 
ally met with in competitions and industrial exhibitions. 
The other is the product of charlatanism, and an inordinate 
desire to acquire a fortune rapidly ; it makes itself known 
especially by advertisements in the public prints. The 
Pharmaceutical J ournal goes on to say that even if the 
remedies of which neither the basis nor the proportions 
are known ought to be rejected from therapeutics, genuine 
specialties, which mark a progress in the pharmaceutic 
art, or intended to facilitate the administration of certain 
medicines, might, up to a certain point, be admitted. 
The distinction between a specialty and a secret remedy is 
not, however, always easy to establish. 
To these remarks of our contemporary we can only say, 
Go on, brother; your aim is in the right direction, but there 
seems to be a mist in front of your mental vision that needs 
clearing up before you can see the difference between 
scientific pharmacy and the unscientific nature of some of 
these “ specialties ” that you seek to shield from the 
righteous condemnation of an outraged pharmaceutical pro- 
fession. Specialties are never officinal preparations. One 
objection we have to them is that they are not prepared 
after officinal formulas, nor are they improvements in the 
art of pharmacy, and many of them have never yet been 
proven of any special therapeutic advantage. If the 
author means to designate official preparations as “ special- 
ties,” we challenge his authority for so doing. There is a 
marked difference between the officinal preparations of the 
pharmacopoeia and the various “ specialties ” that flood 
tha market. Surely the writer in the Pharmaceutical 
J ournal is able to see the broad line of demarkation that 
separates “specialties” from officinal preparations, the 
formulae for which are published in the Pharmacopoeia. 
By his own definition the writer classifies 11 specialties ” 
with secret remedies, for a secret remedy is one “ which 
has not received officinal sanction or publication.” And 
is not this classification usually correct ; for what differ- 
ence is there, except in degree, between a “specialty,” the 
name of which is claimed as private property, and the for- 
mula of which is nowhere published so that any one else 
may manufacture it, and a remedy all knowledge of which 
is concealed from the public eye 1 
It would seem to us, however, that a better standard has 
been fixed between science and secrecy than that given by 
this writer. It is not necessary that a thing should receive 
officinal sanction, or be recognised in the pharmacopoeia 
as officinal, to be scientific ; and a remedy that is not thus 
sanctioned is not for that reason necessarily a secret 
remedy, as this writer seems to infer. The standard to 
which we refer is that required by the patent laws of the 
United States in the giving of patents upon mechanical 
