December 9,1871-3 THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
to Edinburgh, was renewed and strengthened. With 
the view of promoting the study of botany and the cul¬ 
tivation of medical plants, they agreed together to take 
a small piece of ground in the abbey yards, forming, it 
is presumed, a portion of the palace gardens. As they 
proceeded their views expanded, while others became 
interested in their undertaking. A larger piece of 
ground was afterwards taken from Trinity Hospital, 
which has since been known by the name of the Physic 
Gardens, where, by the unwearied zeal and activity of 
Dr., afterwards Sir Andrew Balfour, and others, it be¬ 
came the most renowned medicine garden in Great 
Britain. This was the origin of the Edinburgh Botanic 
Gardens, now so widely and so justly celebrated, which, 
curiously enough, as you are all aware, are now under 
the charge and superintedence of one of the same name 
as its great founder, Professor Balfour. 
During this time the pliysicians never lost sight of 
the grand object ef their ambition. Meanwhile, the 
encroachments of the surgeon apothecaries had become 
insupportable; therefore, to every other and higher mo¬ 
tive self-interest infused new vigour into the exertions, 
which the physicians put forth for the attainment of 
their object; and, notwithstanding the most strenuous 
opposition from the surgeons, clergy, nobility and others, 
and after long discussion of the matter in Privy Council, 
the charter of incorporation was obtained, without any 
restriction on the druggist , and the great seal appended 
on St. Andrew’s day in 1681. 
Immediately on receiving this charter the physicians 
entered with great zeal upon the fulfilment of the func¬ 
tions assigned to them. At this period pharmacy had a 
new and important era inaugurated. At their first meet¬ 
ings the publication of a pharmacopoeia engaged their 
chief attention. To purge the list of the materia me- 
dica, and to secure accuracy and uniformity in pharma¬ 
ceutical preparations then existing, were subjects which 
forced themselves upon their earliest consideration. 
When we think how rude and manifold the mass of 
materials were out of which a selection had to be made, 
we may form some small idea of the importance of the 
work, both in the interests of pharmacy and the ad¬ 
vancement of medical science, in our own city. After 
years of labour, the first edition of the ‘ Edinburgh Phar¬ 
macopoeia ’ made its appearance in 1699, which con¬ 
tained nearly nine hundred articles of the materia me- 
dica. Here, it is worthy of remark, that during the 
172 years which have intervened, we have become ac¬ 
quainted with the medicinal properties of innumerable 
articles before unknown; yet, the pharmacopoeia of to¬ 
day has been considerably reduced. In the first Edin¬ 
burgh edition we see strong proofs of the prejudice and 
superstition, which lingered even in the master minds of 
that age. Amongst the approved pharmaceutical prepa¬ 
rations some contained from forty to seventy articles. 
Notwithstanding all this, the first edition of the ‘Edin¬ 
burgh Pharmacopoeia’ was an improvement upon any 
which had previously existed, this superiority being fully 
maintained in all subsequent editions. 
From the middle of the last century till the beginning 
•of the present one, we have no records bearing on phar¬ 
macy, which adequately convey to our minds its real 
condition and working. We have learned something, 
however, from those who in early life knew how things 
were conducted in the special calling of a druggist, which 
•designation afterwards came to have the word chemist 
prefixed. Dating from the above period, we find that 
there were a number of well-conducted drug shops in the 
city ; amongst them we may mention the following, that 
•of Mr. White’s, in the Lawn Market, with whom -the 
late Mr. Duncan, that worthy father in pharmacy, served 
his apprenticeship; Mr. Moncrieff, North Bridge, to 
whom the Lords of Session and Baronets of that name 
are related, and with whom that much-respected and 
public-spirited citizen the late Baillie M‘Farlane served 
.his apprenticeship ; then Mr. Manderston, of Rose Street, 
who by the way once occupied the honourablo position, 
of Lord Provost; also, Mr. Milner, who carried on busi¬ 
ness in the first fiat of a house in High Street, and many 
others too numerous to mention. At this time fho 
system of sending out ordinary medicines and the modo 
of dispensing prescriptions, was conducted in a different 
style from that of the present day. However respectable 
those were who carried on business at that time, their 
free-and-easy system would seem very strange to us. 
Drugs were sent out in a style we should be very apt to 
call careless, having no carefully printed labels, such as 
we use. Pills were put up in small paper bags; liquids 
with the name of contents or directions written on paper 
and tied round the neck of the bottle, and very often 
without any name at all; while the various alkaloids 
were known only to a very limited extent, and thought 
of as a chemical curiosity. The introduction of many of 
these by Edinburgh chemists, and the changing of many 
of the absurd modes of nomenclature, inaugurated an¬ 
other new era in pharmacy. I cannot pass from this 
subject without mentioning the advantages the young 
pharmacists of to-day enjoy, compared with those in. 
olden times, when the large mortar was their constant 
companion, and all the gums, resins and roots were 
powdered in this manner. Had they pills to make, the 
aloes, gamboge, scammony, etc. had all to be powdered 
first, there being no pill machine to roll them off’, only 
the old rude tile or small portions of the mass rounded 
between the thumb and fingers. The wants of the lieges, 
however, were well attended to, because from seven 
o’clock in the morning till ten or eleven at night, drug- 
shops were found open, but these days have long since 
given place to a better system of things, which might 
even yet be improved. 
Though we can now look back and criticize the doings 
of our ancestors, yet, in many respects, we owe them a 
debt of gratitude, and, certainly, we should prove un¬ 
worthy sons of worthy sires, had we not made those 
advances which have obtained for our city that high and 
honourable position we now hold in the science of phar¬ 
macy. 
A NEW SWEET VOLATILE PRINCIPLE FOUND 
IN THE CAOUTCHOUC OF BORNEO. 
BY ABIE GIRARD.* 
This caoutchouc yields a new saccharine substance—- 
designated by the author as bornesite —which is crystal¬ 
line, very soluble in water, slightly soluble in alcohol, 
melts at 175° without alteration, and, like dambonite 
sublimes at 205° with slight decomposition. It does 
not ferment, neither does it reduce the potassio-tar- 
trate of copper, but acquires the property of reducing 
this reagent by being boiled for several minutes with 
water slightly acidulated. Treated with a mixture of 
sulphuric and nitric acids, it forms a nitrated product, 
insoluble in water, soluble in alcohol, from which it is- 
deposited in the crystallized state, fusible at 30°-35°, 
and detonating loudly when struck. 
Bomcsite has the composition C 7 H 7 0 6 , and when 
heated to 120° in a closed vessel with fuming hydriodic 
acid, decomposes, like dambonite, into methyl iodide 
and dambose—• 
C;H 7 0 6 + HI = CH 3 I + 2 C 3 H c 0 3 . 
Bornesite. Dambose. 
Dambonite and dambose have no effect upon polarized 
light, but bornesite possesses a rotatory power of 32° to 
the right, or nearly half that of pure cane-sugar under 
similar circumstances. Dambonite and bornesite may 
be considered as dambosates of methyl, the combination, 
of two molecules of dambose in bornesite creating in the 
latter the power of rotating a ray of polarized light. 
* Compt. Rend, lxxiii. 426-429, from the Journal of the 
Chemical Society. 
