413 
ON THE ANATOMY OF DEUGS. 
In the year 1744, the Co23ley medal of the Royal Society was awarded to Henry 
Baker, F.R.S., “ for his curious experiments relating to the crystallization or con¬ 
figuration of the minute particles of saline bodies dissolved in a menstruum,” in 
other words, for micro-chemical researches. Our business is, at present, with 
organized rather than crystallized substances, and we should have been content 
with merely mentioning the fact, were it not that some of his observations seem 
to foreshadow a line of investigation which has only recently received increased 
attention. Baker’s first work, ‘ The Microscope made Easy,’ "was, like many 
other such books, dedicated to the Royal Society. It contains but little 
original matter; or, at least, whatever there is of new in it, is better detailed in 
his ‘Employment for the Microscope,’ published twenty years later (1764). 
Here we have figures of crystals to our’heart’s content, not only of simple salts 
of mineral origin, such as alum, borax, blue, green, and white vitriol, nitre, 
verdigris, corrosive sublimate, and many others, but, what is of more interest, 
crystallizations from certain mineral waters, especially those of Cheltenham and 
Scarborough. The appearances of manna (inannite ?), benzoic acid, and camphor, 
crystallized from their respective solutions, are also well delineated. The author 
seems to have had an idea that every plant contained some definite crystalline 
matter peculiar to itself, and he figures no less than fifteen “ salts ” obtained 
from various vegetables; amongst them we find salt of Peruvian bark, salt of 
berberry, salt of wormwood, salt of cucumber, and salt of chamomile. It is not 
very clear what these “ salts ” may be. It is scarcely likely that they were ob¬ 
tained by the evaporation of the portions of the plant directly soluble in water; 
if so, the process would bear much similarity to one recently proposed for the 
estimation of the value of certain extracts and inspissated juices by means of 
the microscope. We suspect that they are rather inorganic salts obtained from 
the ashes of the substances named. Whether organic or inorganic is not of great 
moment; the fact of their observation is only brought forward in order to show 
that the crystalline constituents of vegetables had attracted the attention of mi- 
croscopists before the middle of the eighteenth century. 
Adams’s ‘Essays on the Microscope,’ jDublished a few years later than the 
last named work, though in many respects valuable, contain little that need 
lengthen these introductory remarks. His list of bodies suitable for he micro¬ 
scope embraces but few pertaining to pharmacy, with the exception of those 
noticed in his chajDter on seeds. Herein we find pretty accurate figures and 
descriptions of the fruits of a number of the medicinal Umbelliferae^ —anise, 
fennel, cummin, coriander, and parsley ; and even sections of one or two of them, 
to show the disposition of the external ridges and furrows which form their most 
striking character, but, as a matter of course, they are regarded as seeds, in 
accordance with the views of scientific men of the time. The fruits of the 
juniper and the bay are similarly treated, and the structure of the various parts 
well made out. Amongst seeds proper, those of Artemisia (worm-seed), Pa- 
2 )aver, Hyoscyamus, and the Areca palm, com^mise all that can be regarded 
as pharmaceutical. The work contains probably the first investigations in the 
structure of vegetable tissues by means of thin transparent sections, and the figures 
of transverse sections of the stems of sugar-cane, bamboo. Althaea, Cheno- 
podium, and some other plants are not only carefully drawn, but from charac¬ 
teristic well-selected specimens. It will be recollected that Hooke, Grew, and 
the other earlier writers, were content to cut a smooth surface of the structure 
to be examined, and view it as an opaque object, and their drawings are always 
made as from a solid body of considerable thickness. 
A\e may now leave the early literature of the subject, with the intention 
of reviewing briefly, in another paper, the present state of our knowledge of the 
structure of 2 )liarmaceutical substances. 
