SAVEET SPIRIT OF NITRE. 
239 
Here, then, is work for qualified'pharmaceutists, and ample material for dis¬ 
cussion. All dispensers know and feel the great inconvenience—now greater 
than ever—of having prescriptions put into their hands for preparations which 
have no authorized form. There is first the humiliation of being unable to 
give your customer that full information regarding his medicine, which it is the 
growing habit of customers to require; there is next the unpleasantness of 
being compelled to make him wait a couple of hours for an article which might 
be dispensed in five minutes ; and last, not least, there is the uncertainty whether 
the medicine which you have procured from the laboratory of A., shall be the 
same as one of a similar name prepared by B. 
We would by no means say that all the new remedies and improved forms 
of medicine of the present day are improvements in pharmacy, and should be 
adopted by the Pharmacopoeia; far from it—we earnestly trust that the pro¬ 
posed standing Committee will have power, and use it too, to reject as well as 
adopt; but we do say that all these things should be discussed among us; there 
would be no surer Avay of discovering their merits or demerits; and by such 
means Ave might perhaps avoid that reproach to pharmacy which Ave iioav Avit- 
ness as a groAving evil, of certain compounds being naturalized in practice under 
false names, names of definite chemical signification to which they have no 
title. 
Within the year avc have seen a Pharmaceutical Conference established, and 
our Society may congratulate itself on having fostered the spirit from Avhich it 
springs. The promoters of that Conference were among our earliest supporters, 
pupils and prizemen. They are our supporters iioav, and there should be no 
rivalry betAveen the tAvo associations, save that which would urge each on its 
way to success, and mutually benefit both. 
The annual discussion at some great centre in the country, should enrich 
rather than impoverish the evening discussions at Bloomsbury Square, and we 
hope our friends who are preparing to go to Bath in the summer, will not the 
less favour us with their company during our winter session, and arouse in the 
Society generally such an interest in pharmacy as shall in turn fill the City of 
Bladud with the votaries of Alsculapius. 
SWEET SPIRIT OE NITRE; ITS IMPURITIES AND 
ADULTERATIONS. 
The ‘ Lancet ’ has commenced a series of articles on the u Impurities and Adul¬ 
terations” of medicines, and sweet spirit of nitre forms the subject of the first of 
these articles. Thirty-one samples of this popular medicine Avere submitted to 
examination, having been obtained principally from the low districts at the East- 
end of London, about the Docks, Whitechapel, ShadAvell, etc.: there were Iioav - 
ever five samples obtained from West-end chemists. The examination appears 
to have consisted in the determination of the specific gravity, the amount of free 
acid, the presence or othenvise of aldehyde, and the indications afforded by the 
smell and taste of the presence of methylated spirit and empyreumatic oils. No 
less than fourteen of the samples, we are sorry to say, but all from the Ioav neigh¬ 
bourhoods, afforded evidence of methylated spirit having been used in the prepa¬ 
ration, and five other specimens are described as having an empyreumatic taste. 
The analyst in his report states that “ Spiritus JEtheris Nitrici of the Phar¬ 
macopoeia, commonly known as sweet spirit of nitre , consists of a mixture, 
in definite proportions, of hyponitrous ether and alcohol.” He gives the specific 
gravity of the spirit made by the London process, namely, - 834, and taking this 
as his standard, compares the samples under examination Avith it. He says, 
s 2 
