PHARMACEUTICAL MEETING. 
6 to 
of the world. Bear in mind that this would modify no dose, alter no strength, 
and change no formula ; but Pharmacy should not stand aloof from the advan¬ 
tage offered by this simple and accurate mode of computation. 
The second is the use of Latin, the language of definition, the commonwealth 
of scholarship, a dialect like the Easter benediction, Urbi et Orbi. Strange that 
France should selfishly have produced its new Codex in a tongue not under- 
standed of by the common people. 
How is a Pharmacopoeia created ? 
There are men in all ages who have a passion for the healing art. By patient 
observation and repeated trial some remedy attracts their notice. Medicine 
must begin inevitably in speciality. First in order, peculiar virtues are attributed 
to herbs, roots, and flowers. Metals and chemical combinations follow, and 
slowly yet surely fresh remedial agents are added to the list. 
Nor does the physician work alone ; the progressive march of chemistry ren¬ 
ders its aid daily more essential and conspicuous ; the chemist helps by direct 
experiment and research,—so only,—for here comes the broad line of demara- 
cation between the medical profession and the chemist. The one originates and 
dictates, the other aids experimentally, and works out theory ; but the latter can 
no more usurp the physician’s office than the chisel can turn sculptor. 
“ From what has been said,” writes Dr. Paris, “ it is very evident that the 
mere chemist can have no pretensions to the art of composing or discriminating 
remedies; whenever he arraigns the scientific propriety of our prescriptions, in 
direct contradiction to the deductions of true medical experience,—whenever he 
forsakes his laboratory for the bedside, he forfeits all his claims to our respect, 
and his title to our confidence.” 
By this united work formulae are shaped out, first oral and traditional; to be 
confided next to the doubtful care of manuscript, from which they are finally 
rescued by the press. Other labourers follow in the track, coming with more 
accurate and wider knowledge, and, never be it forgotten, wdth the heritage 
of former discovery. Many a vaunted panacea is rejected, and many an 
absurdity is quietly sifted out; the true remains, wFether it be the metal 
dug from the soil, or the tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. 
Hence certain remedies are common to the world. But the physician, reaping 
the advantage of the facts of science, moulds them to his purpose. His practice, 
that is his actual system of therapeutics, is taught him, not by books, but by 
every influence of external nature—by the habits, physical and moral, natural 
or acquired, of the men, women, and children with whom he is thrown in con¬ 
tact, by their daily lives, and by their daily deaths. His formulae are not his 
own creation, but are dictated to him by the law of his surroundings. No 
learned commission sitting in solemn conclave can in German fashion evolve a 
Codex from its inner consciousness ; take the physician, with all his skill, out 
of the circle of his existence, be it never so wide, and he goes to a different 
school, where he is taught another lesson. New influences compel new thought, 
new therapeutics, and new formulae ; and thus not only is he writing day by day, 
and hour b}’’ hour, his Pharmacopoeia, but is weaving the threads of nationality 
into its every page. These threads cannot be disentangled. 
The Chairman, in thanking Mr. luce for his communication, said the sub¬ 
ject was an interesting one, especially just now, as it was likely to be dis¬ 
cussed at the meeting of the Pharmaceutical Congress at Paris this year. 
Dr. Faere said he fully endorsed every word of Mr. Ince’s paper. It was 
with some difficulty that they had effected an amalgamation of the English, 
Scotch, and Irish Pharmacopoeias, between which much less difference had 
previously existed than there was between the Pharmacopoeia of this country 
and some of those on the Continent. When they considered that the com- 
