RELATION OF THE BRITISH PHARMACOPEIA TO PHARMACOLOGY. 561 
SCHEDULE D. 
To the Registrar of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. 
We hereby declare that the undersigned , residing at , 
in the County of , had before the passing of the Pharmacy Act, 1864, been 
actually employed as an Assistant to a Pharmaceutical Chemist or Chemist and Druggist, 
and attained the age of twenty-one years. 
As witness our hands, this day of , 1864. 
A. B., Assistant. 
C. D., Pharmaceutical Chemist. 
E. F., Chemist and Druggist. 
LECTURES ON THE BRITISH PHARMACOPCEIA. 
ON THE RELATION OE THE BRITISH PHARMACOPOEIA TO 
PHARMACOLOGY. 
Lecture I. 
Delivered before the Members of the Pharmaceutical Society, April 13, 1864. 
BY DR. JOHN ATTFIELD, F.C.S., 
DIRECTOR OF THE SOCIETY’S LABORATORIES. 
The new Pharmacopoeia—published under the auspices of the General Council 
of Medical Education and Registration of the United Kingdom as the first 
great drug-book that, to the exclusion of every other, is destined to be used by all 
Medical Practitioners, Apothecaries, and Pharmaceutic Chemists throughout the 
whole British Empire—demands from the professed leaders in Pharmacy close 
and accurate critical examination. To facilitate the construction of this volume, 
its authors have had the opportunity of consulting the researches of gentle¬ 
men, who, inasmuch as they are learned in the science of Pharmacy, as well as 
practised in its art, may be called Pharmacologists as well as Pharmaceutists. 
If this, the first duty of authorship in the compilation of a book, the chief cha¬ 
racteristic of which is, that it is a collection of descriptions of processes to be 
followed in the preparation of medicines, each process having been perfected pro¬ 
bably by the joint labour of many workers; if this, the first duty of the authors 
of such a book, has been carefully performed, then, and then only, may we re¬ 
gard the new Pharmacopoeia as the exponent of modern British Pharmacy, and 
as one of the most important contributions that have ever been made to the 
advancement of Pharmacology. My colleagues have given you critical and ex¬ 
planatory lectures on the Chemical and Galenical Processes and Preparations, 
and on the Organic Materia Medica of the Pharmacopoeia ; I propose to exa¬ 
mine it chiefly in its relations to Pharmacological Investigation, that is, to point 
out the instances in which its authors have, and have not, taken advantage of the 
published suggestions of those engaged in practising pharmacy. In order, more¬ 
over, to make this course of lectures as useful as possible to the Members of the 
Pharmaceutical Society and to the readers of the Pharmaceutical Journal, I also 
shall include explanatory notes wherever I may consider them to be necessary. 
Without further preface then, and following the alphabetical arrangement of the 
Pharmacopoeia itself, I shall at once proceed to the detailed consideration of the 
preparations it may be desirable to notice. 
Acidum Aceticum. —In this, the first of the fourteen officinal acids, we have 
an excellent illustration of the advantages derived from the publication of the 
British Pharmacopoeia, the old twelve varieties of acetic acid having been reduced 
in number to three. It is true that one of the three, Acidum Aceticum Glaciale , 
might also have been omitted; at the same time it must be remembered, that as it 
