PROFESSOR GUIBOURT. 
205 
His bright example, the good work he did while here, and a name en¬ 
shrined in long-lasting fame, are all that is now left us of Michael Faraday. 
He was born on the 22nd of September, 1791, and died on the 25th of August, 
1867, aged nearly seventy-six. 
THE LATE PROFESSOR GUIBOURT. 
The Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain has lost one of its more eminent 
members in the person of Nicolas Jean Baptiste Gaston Guibourt, the venerable 
professor of the School of Pharmacy of Paris, who died on the 22nd of August 
at the advanced age of 77. 
Commencing his pharmaceutical studies at the age of fifteen, M. Guibourt was 
awarded five years later the first prizes (two gold medals) for chemistry and 
pharmacy offered by the School of Pharmacy, and about the same time was 
named eleve interne at the Pharmacie Centrale des Hopitaux Civils, from which 
post he was gradually advanced to those of Assistant Director and Chef des 
Magasins. After more than ten years connection with the administration of 
the civil hospitals of Paris, M. Guibourt was received as pharmacien , and forth¬ 
with established himself in business in the Rue Richelieu, then called the Rue 
Feydeau. In 1832 he was named Titular Professor of the Natural History of 
Drugs of the School of Pharmacy of Paris, and in 1854 became secretary to the 
same establishment, the onerous duties of which post he performed with assi¬ 
duity for more than twenty years. Having abandoned the practice of phar¬ 
macy at the time he accepted this office, M. Guibourt came to reside at the 
School of Pharmacy, which continued to be his abode until last year, when the 
infirmities of age induced him to retire. 
M. Guibourt’s last illness was rapid. On the evening of the 20th of August 
he was present at the sitting of the Pharmaceutical Congress, which he addressed 
in an animated manner and it was expected he would be able to take part in 
the discussions of the larger international assembly that was about to meet on 
the following day. But symptoms of indisposition had set in which increased in 
intensity the following day, proving fatal to the venerable patient, who expired 
on the morning of the 22nd without pain and in full consciousness to the last. 
The death of M. Guibourt as may be easily supposed, threw the deepest gloom 
over the assembly of pharmaceutists then sitting in Paris, who to the number of 
140 testified their respect for his memory by accompanying his remains to the 
church in which the funeral service was performed. 
Professor Guibourt was named a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1846, 
and in 1863 was promoted to the grade of Officer ; he was also a Member of 
the Imperial Academy of Medicine, and of many learned societies of the Conti¬ 
nent. But honourable as were these titles, still more so was the reputation he 
derived from his numerous and valuable writings. In 1820, he published 
in two octavo volumes his Histoire cibregee des Drogues Simples , a work 
which passed through three editions, re-appearing a fourth time in 1849-51 in 
an enlarged form, under the altered title of Histoire Nciturelle des Drogues 
Simples. Professor Guibourt was also author of a Pharmacopee Raisonnee , the 
first edition of which was published in 1828 in conjunction with the late M. 
Henry. Two subsequent editions dating respectively 1834 and 1841, were 
from the pen of M. Guibourt alone. Nor was he less industrious as a contribu¬ 
tor to the periodical literature of pharmacy, for we find that between 1814 and 
1867, there are but three years in which his busy pen failed to present the re¬ 
sult of some observations to the pharmaceutical public. But if the year 1861, 
which was one of these three, supplied no communication from M. Guibourt, his 
elaborate memoir on the estimation of morphia in opium, published in the be¬ 
ginning of 1862, abundantly explained why his silence had been longer than 
