ON THE CHEMICAL PROCESSES AND PREPARATIONS. 
407 
copoeia of the London College of Physicians has been the authorized guide to 
which medical prescribers and dispensers throughout the greater part of the 
British dominions have looked for instruction with reference to the composition 
and preparation of medicines. For more than a century and a half there has 
been a separate guide, originating from a different source, and having exclusive 
authority in Scotland; while in Ireland, for rather more than half a century, 
the Dublin Pharmacopoeia has occupied a similar position among physicians and 
apothecaries in that country. The existence of these different guides, relating 
alike to the preparation of medicines for the inhabitants of the same kingdom, 
and ordering in many instances under the same name preparations differing in 
composition or strength, has long been felt to be a serious evil; and for this the 
Medical Council have provided a remedy in the production of the British Phar¬ 
macopoeia. 
Nobody doubts that the publication of this work has been a wise measure, for 
which there was urgent occasion. The book which will now be the only autho¬ 
rized guide on the subject to which it relates u throughout Great Britain and 
Ireland,” has been prepared under circumstances calculated to give to it a high 
degree of authority. Never before has there been such a combination of talent 
associated for the production of a Pharmacopoeia in this country; and if the 
measures adopted should be found to have failed in realizing the expectations 
that have been formed, it will not be from a deficiency of labourers or of labour 
employed in the work, but rather, it may be, from an error in the opposite 
direction. Some disappointment, indeed, has already been expressed ; but it 
must be admitted that the committees sitting in the three capitals of England, 
Ireland, and Scotland, representing the medical practice, and influenced as they 
would necessarily be to some extent by the peculiarities in the medical treatment 
which custom has established in those separate parts of the kingdom, have had 
no easy task to perform in reconciling differences, and producing a rule and 
guide for medical and pharmaceutical practice that shall be applicable and ac¬ 
ceptable throughout the British dominions. 
The work has been looked for with great expectations ; and now that it has 
arrived we are all anxious, not only to read, but diligently to study it, and to 
become acquainted with the substances to which it refers—with its descriptions, 
of drugs, and its processes for the preparation of medicines. 
There is no part of the great body of medical practitioners to whom the study 
of the Pharmacopoeia is more interesting and important than it is to the phar¬ 
maceutical chemist. Pie has not only to become acquainted with the composi¬ 
tion, the characters, and properties of the medicines which are ordered, but he 
must study, and should thoroughly understand, the nature of the changes which 
occur in their production, the extent of the adaptation of the processes given for 
the purposes for which they are intended, and the means by which the apparent 
intentions of the authors may be most effectually realized. 
It is with the view of promoting and facilitating the study, the comprehen¬ 
sion, and appreciation of the changes which are effected by the introduction of 
the British Pharmacopoeia, that my colleague and myself, at the request of the: 
Council of this Society, are about to deliver a few lectures here during this and 
next month. It is proposed that I should describe and explain the processes 
and preparations, both chemical and galenical; while my colleague, Professor 
Bentley, will describe and explain the Organic Materia Medica. 
In this lecture I shall confine myself to the chemical preparations, leaving the 
galenical preparations for a subsequent lecture. My object, of course, will be 
to show the influence of the introduction of the British Pharmacopeia upon 
the practice of pharmacy. We have to consider what are the changes this work 
proposes or is calculated to effect. There are some medicines omitted now which 
were previously ordered ; some medicines introduced now which were not pre- 
