IIEVIEW OF THE FRENCH CODEX. 
385 . 
The volume sets out with a preface of twentj-six pages. The scope of the work is 
limited by the definition of the word medicament—^ name, it is said, which is applied to 
every substance introduced into the economy in the treatment of disease. A distinction, 
however, is made between a medicine and a remedy, the latter word being understood 
not only to include the former, but also to extend to whatever is capable of combating 
the disorder, improving the condition of the patient, and effecting a cure ; thus, blood¬ 
letting, electricity, hydrotlierapie, and regimen are mentioned as examples of remedies,, 
whilst tartar emetic, sulphate of quinia, and chloroform are named as belonging to that 
class of medicines of which alone the Codex professes to treat. The commissioners, 
whilst admitting the perfect freedom of the physician to prescribe and the pharmaceutist 
to dispense whatever it may be deemed expedient to employ in the treatment of disease, 
and to call all such substances medicines, nevertheless have thought it right to with¬ 
hold the sanction and authority of the Codex from all substances which though for¬ 
merly esteemed have by maturer judgment been discarded, as well as from others which 
have only or chiefly the personal interest of the inventor or manufacturer to recommend 
them; in other words, they profess to have purged the old Codex of its bygone sub¬ 
stances, both simple and compound, and to have accepted only such new ones as bear the 
impress of serious investigation. They admit, moreover, that the Codex of to-day will 
in its turn become old and threadbare, and that it will fall to the lot of another genera¬ 
tion to restore it to a fitting place amongst the practical results of progressive experi¬ 
mental science. The commissioners foresee that medicines of simple character and re¬ 
cognized physiological effect will tend to displace the complex masses of traditional 
authority; that instead of burying opium in the midst of Theriaca, that drug will 
itself undergo a still finer subdivision into active principles, each of which will be 
found to subserve some distinct therapeutical purposes. And what then ? Will Materia 
Medica be rendered so simple and exact that there will be no longer any necessity for 
pharmacopoeias, for dispensatories, for the Pharmaceutical Chemist himself ? Will the 
time not arrive when a mere medicine-vendor will replace the educated pharmaceutist, 
when the practical chemist will supply substances so neatly and accurately prepared that 
the dispenser of them can no longer pretend to scientific merit or professional status? 
No, the commissioners say, this will not be so: for, we perceive, day by day, how in pro¬ 
portion as these energetic medicines increase in number, in purity, in concentration, in 
power, it becomes more essential that the pharmaceutist, charged with their preparation, 
their preservation, their 'manipulation, their posology, be well-informed, careful and 
trustworthy. Intelligence must keep pace with increasing responsibility. The phar¬ 
maceutist requires increasing breadth and depth of instruction, in proportion as the pro¬ 
gress of therapeutics places at his disposal medicines more numerous, more powerful, more 
changeable, more readily sophisticated ; respecting which the most trifling mistakes 
threaten the life of the patient, the slightest modifications of which blight the physi¬ 
cian’s hope. “V7hen,”the Commission adds, “this conviction is pervading England 
herself, enlightened by mistakes which are multiplying under her eyes, and the infinite 
evils which they entail, it is not the moment which France, where it has ever been, 
entertained, should choose to abandon it.” 
Animated by views such as these, the Commission set themselves to the work of 
revising the Codex, upon the following plan ;— 
The Codex Medicamentarius consists of three parts : preliminary matters, Materia 
Medica, and Pharmacopoeia. 
The preliminary part is contained in twenty-nine pages, and refers chiefly to weights 
and measures, densities, fusion-points, boiling-points, relative solubility of substances in 
cornu on use, and the chemical equivalents of the elementary bodies. In this part there 
are a good many tables, both absolute and comparative. The second part, comprising the 
Materia Medica, is contained in ninety pages, and is divided into two parts:—(a) Sub¬ 
stances obtained immediately from vegetables or animals; (h) Substances obtained from 
minerals and chemical products. Animals, their parts and products, of medicinal use, 
are dismissed with the brief statement that they are few in number, mn all supplied by 
commerce, and are to be selected according to the excellence of their respective quali¬ 
ties. Vegetables, their parts and products, on the contrary, furnish nearly the whole of 
the organic Materia Medica, and a caution is added that whilst those which are procured 
in the way of commerce must be selected carefully, others of indigenous production are 
to be collected under those conditions of age, season, and development, in which they 
