NATIONAL PHARMACOPOEIA. 
563 
tions, which result from wounds of the lungs, diseases of the 
heart, aneurisms, and all those affections which produce great 
and sudden congestion of the organ. Army surgeons bleed 
largely and at once in wounds of the lungs, before the inflam- 
mation sets in. 
6< 5. The use of venesection, therefore, in pneumonia, is to 
relieve the cardiac congestion which is produced by the im- 
pediment to the circulation of blood through the lungs ; it 
neither arrests nor modifies the inflammation. And the 
corollary of this is, that venesection is frequently required 
during the progress of pneumonia, and of many other diseases, 
for the object indicated. 
i( 6. It is not denied, by anything here stated, that local 
bleeding in the inflammation of internal organs, where there 
is no direct vascular connexion between the skin and the in- 
flamed organ, may not influence the inflammation by some 
reflex action conveyed thence from the skin to the vaso-motor 
nerves of the inflamed organ ; but this influence, if it exists, 
has yet to be demonstrated.” 
THE NATIONAL PHARMACOPCEIA. 
The Medical Bill recently passed provides for the pub- 
lishing of a National Pharmacopoeia. Although we are not 
bound by it to the formation of our compounds, yet doubtless 
there will be in it many formulae of value. We shall, there- 
fore, anxiously wait for its production, and select from it 
such preparations as we may deem available for veterinary 
purposes. In the mean time we extract the following obser- 
vations on it from our contemporary the Pharmaceutical 
Journal : 
“ The Medical Art having transferred the responsibility of 
publishing a Pharmacopoeia from the Colleges of Physicians 
to the Medical Council about to be constituted, we may look 
forward with confidence to the appearance, within a reasona- 
ble time of a National Pharmacopoeia. The three Colleges 
had previously taken measures for the accomplishment of 
this object ; many communications had taken place on the 
subject, and some progress has already been made in the 
revision of the three Pharmacopoeias, with a view* of amalga- 
mating the substance of them into one volume, with such 
omissions and additions as occasion might require. Much, 
however, remains to be done, and, even supposing the diffi- 
culties of adjusting the Materia Medica and the formulae to 
