NOTES ON THE PHARMACOPOEIA. 
393 
Council. The principal objects of my communication this evening are to 
explain what I conceive to be the present position of some questions relating to 
the Pharmacopoeia ; to state to you what I have already represented to the 
Medical Council on these topics ; to express for myself, and on behalf of the 
committee with which I have been working, the obligations we are under to 
a large number of practical pharmacists for much information which has 
tended greatly to enhance the value of the British Pharmacopoeia, and to en¬ 
courage continued attention and interest in the important object of making 
this national work equal, if not superior, to any other Pharmacopoeia in exis¬ 
tence. 
Allow me, in the first place, to allude to some of the principal features of the 
British Pharmacopoeia as modified in 1867. I wish especially to notice, first, 
the language in which the work is written ; secondly, the arrangement of the 
matter; thirdly, the nomenclature applied to the substances treated of ; fourthly, 
the symbolic notation used for representing the composition of chemical sub¬ 
stances ; fifthly, the terms employed for representing the proportions of ingre¬ 
dients used in the various processes ; and sixthly, the method of describing or 
setting out the formulae for processes. 
1. Language. —The British Pharmacopoeia is written in English. I am aware 
that some difference of opinion exists as to whether it ought not to be in 
Latin, as our Pharmacopoeias used to be. There appear to be many advocates 
for the use of the classical language, and some strong arguments are adduced in 
favour of it; but, on the other hand, it cannot be denied that it is important to 
make the descriptions of the substances and the processes treated "of in the 
Pharmacopoeia as complete and explicit as possible, and many of the terms of 
modern science, such as would be most suitably used in such cases, have no good 
representatives in Latin. It will be found that processes are often very imper¬ 
fectly described in the Pharmacopoeias that have been written in Latin, and 
this, I believe, has principally arisen from the inadequacy of the language to 
couvey all that it was desirable to communicate. 
2. Arrangement of Matter. —I believe the arrangement of the matter in the 
British Pharmacopoeia has given universal satisfaction ; at least I have not 
heard of anything having been expressed to the contrary. 
3. Nomenclature. —No great or very important changes were made in the 
names applied to the medicines which are described in the present Pharmacopoeia, 
yet some changes were thought to be necessary or desirable, and new names have 
therefore been introduced; the objects aimed at in their selection being “to adopt 
such as, with a due regard to conciseness, are most explicit and most likely to 
be understood, while at the same time they do not unnecessarily involve scientific 
theories that are liable to change/' This applies especially to the names of 
chemical compounds. Some of the changes in chemical names were made with 
the view of establishing greater consistency among them, or,.where this could 
be done without interfering with other more important considerations, to recon¬ 
cile the names used with generally accepted theories or the prevailing practice 
among chemists. To a limited extent, some further changes in chemical names 
might perhaps be made, so as still further to reconcile them with the names 
used by scientific chemists, without interfering with the principles hitherto acted 
upon. I am decidedly of opinion, however, that the names applied to medicines 
in the Pharmacopoeia ought not to be changed without strong grounds for 
doing so. 
4. Symbolic Notation. —At the time the Pharmacopoeia was preparing for pub¬ 
lication, a new system of notation in chemistry was being introduced, but this 
system was not then so generally adopted or understood as to justify its use in 
the Pharmacopoeia in the place of the older system which had previously been 
adopted. Under these circumstances it was decided to insert formulae con- 
vol. xi. 2 D 
