314 
THE NEW ERENCTI CODEX. 
It lias been generally known in pbarmacentical circles that for several years 
past preparations have been in jii’ogress for the publication of a new edition 
of the French Pharmacoxioeia. At the end of 1861 and beginning of 1862 
Ministerial deccees were issued, by which the necessary authority was given, 
and an Imperial Commission appointed, for tlie revision of the then exist¬ 
ing Codex and the production of a new work which should supersede it 
throughout the French Empire. The Commission consisted of five professors 
of the School of Medicine, five professors of the School of Pharmacy, four 
practical pharmaceutists, two members of the Academy of Sciences, and two 
Ministers of Public Instruction. The result of the labours of the Com¬ 
mission has just appeared, in the form of a royal octavo volume of 830 
pages. Such a work, emanating from such a Commission, comprising some 
of the most eminent medical, chemical, and pharmaceutical authorities of 
France, could not fail to attract a great deal of attention in other coun¬ 
tries as well as that for which it is especially intended. It is certainly the 
most comprehensive work of the sort extant. Not only is the list of natural pro¬ 
ducts derived from the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms unusually 
long, but the compounds prepared from these are also, we believe, more nu¬ 
merous than they are in any other Pharmacopseia. That the descriptions 
given, both of natural products and of substances prepared by the art of the 
chemist and pharmaceutist, should be consistent with the present advanced 
state of knowledge is what would be confidently anticipated from the circum¬ 
stances under which the work has been written. Neither time, nor labour, 
nor expense have been spared in producing a book worthy of its position, and 
calculated to reflect credit upon its authors. Yet there are some features in 
this French Codex which foreigners will view with surprise and regret. The 
work is very difierent in some respects from those which now occupy 
the corresponding positions in Germany, America, and this country. For 
many years we have been engaged in trying to weed out from officinal medi¬ 
cines all worthless substances, and we no longer retain in our Materia Medica 
many drugs which in past ages occupied an important position there. We 
still retain th(Te presentatives of medicines which once figured in our pharma¬ 
copoeias as the antidotes for all known poisons or the remedies for almost every 
conceivable complaint, but we have simplified their composition, retaining 
what was supposed to be useful, and omitting what was obviously worth¬ 
less. Thus we retained, under the names of Confectio Catechu and Confectio 
Opii, the representatives in simplified and rationalized forms of the once 
celebrated Mithridate and Theriaca, which formerly occupied positions in 
the Pharmocopoeias with their fifty or more ingredients. One of the old 
Paris Pharmacopoeias contained a formula for a ^daster (Emplastrum Diabo- 
tonon) consisting of sixty ingredients, and for a distilled water (Aqua Gene- 
ralis) consisting of more than one hundred and twenty ingredients. We 
abolished this sort of polypharmacy more than a hundred years ago ; but the 
French Codex still retains a formula for Theriaca with sixty ingredients, in¬ 
cluding agaric, asphaltum, and dried vipers. It is much to be regretted that 
the Commission did not feel themselves justified, by the existing state of 
medical practice in France, in abolishing or remodelling this and other rem¬ 
nants of the medicines of a by-gone age. But with some such blemishes, 
there is in the Codex Medicamentarius much that may be studied with profit 
and followed with advantage by pharmaceutists of all countries. We shall 
hope to give a more detailed analysis and review of the work when we can 
do so in connection with the forthcoming edition of the British Pharmaco¬ 
poeia, and this may be expected very shortly. 
