522 
PHARMACEUTICAL MEETING. 
subject which bore upon the language in which the Pharmacopoeia was written. 
He had always been an advocate for the Pharmacopoeia being written in Latin, 
because it was his opinion that it could be more generally read and understood 
on the Continent in Latin than if it was in English. That was his principal 
reason, but now' he had another reason, and it was this,—it seemed to him an 
anomaly that, at the present time, when they were so highly educating their 
young people, they should write the Pharmacopoeia in English ; whereas for¬ 
merly, when they w r ere not so highly educated, the Pharmacopoeia was written 
in Latin. There could not, in many respects, be anything better than the old 
London Pharmacopoeia. Dr. Redwood’s excuse for putting it in English, and 
certainly it was a good reason, was this,—that they could explain their mean¬ 
ing in English much more explicitly than they possibly could in Latin; but he 
(Mr. Haselden) thought that might be overcome, as on former occasions, by 
giving translators the opportunity to make translations in English, and also to 
give a great many valuable and necessary remarks, which they had not the same 
opportunity or the same encouragement to do, now that the Pharmacopoeia was 
published in Euglish. Referring more particularly to the editorial part of the 
work, he said that he had formerly suggested that the decoctions in the Phar¬ 
macopoeia should all be ordered of one uniform measure, and in the preseut 
edition that was carried out with regard to decoctions; but when he turned to 
the mixtures, he found, what appeared to him, he would not say an error, but 
an inelegance. The formula for mistura ammoniaci gave 8 ounces, being half 
a pint old measure, while that for mistura amygdalee gave 20 ounces, or a pint 
new measure. Then mistura creasoti gave 16 ounces, a pint old measure, and 
he might remark in passing, that the same quantity of spirit of juniper was 
ordered in 1864 as in 1867, although the juniper spirit was five times as strong 
in 1864 as it was in 1867. Probably that was an oversight. Again, in mistura 
cretse they had the old measure, and in mistura ferri composita the new measure. 
With reference to mistura scammonii, he thought it might very well be ex¬ 
punged from the Pharmacopoeia altogether. It was very rarely ordered, and when 
it was, it was generally for a child, but he did not know why they should deluge 
a child with two ounces of liquid, when a little egg would answer the same pur¬ 
pose. They had formulae for three or four mixtures constructed according to 
the old measure, and others according to the new. In these days, when they 
were desirous of being very particular, and when some gentlemen were anxious 
to carry out the decimal system, he thought it would be better if they were to 
bring all to one standard, and if the measures were all imperial they would be 
decimal. There was one preparation in the Pharmacopoeia which he should 
like to see altered in some way or other, and that was the belladonna plaster. 
They were directed to take a given quantity of extract and a given quantity of 
spirit, rub them together, allow the insoluble part to subside, to pour off the 
clear liquor, and after removing the spirit by distillation or evaporation, to mix 
the extract with a certain quantity of resin plaster. Now the strength of the 
plaster must necessarily vary, depending very much upon the state of hydration 
of the extract itself. The more water they had, and the more they reduced the 
strength of the spirit, the larger probably would be the proportion they would 
have in solution. There were no directions given as to time, it might be an 
hour or twelve hours; so that it appeared to him to be a very imperfect kind of 
preparation. Several suggestions had been made about that, and some of them 
were very good ones, but he could not help going back to a very old one of his 
own, which he threw out some ten or twelve years ago—that if there must be 
belladonna plaster, why not make it at once with atropia ? He had given a 
formula for making this plaster, and he believed that no valid objection had 
been raised to it. He also suggested, at the same time, that opium plaster 
should be made in the same way with morphia. They obtained thereby a much 
