96 
ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 
extemporaneous use and preparation as the salts and bases in 
common use. It is to this approaching and inevitable change 
in the character of Pharmacy that I wish to call your attention 
and invite your aid. 
In order to appreciate fully the rich resources which che- 
mistry is about to pour into the lap of her parent science, we 
must take into view the striking connection which exists be- 
tween the natural characters of plants and their chemical con- 
stitution. Whole families are almost as distinctly marked by 
their common physical properties as by their external charac- 
ters. The alkalies which give to the cinchonas their peculiar 
virtue, in all probability exist in many of the affiliated families, 
masked, perhaps, by their combination with now unknown 
acids, yet not placed beyond the reach of chemical research. 
There is also a large class of medicines which we now ob- 
tain in the form of an exudation from certain portions of the 
plant, yet of which the whole vegetable is filled. The milky 
sap of the poppy circulates through every leaf and stem, and 
we gather only the small proportion which exudes from a few 
small punctures. Is it hazarding anything to assert that ere 
long the plant will be made to yield the whole of its narcotic 
principle, and that better processes than are now in use will 
present it to us in the form of morphia, instead of those iso- 
meric and metamorphosed compounds which are now so em- 
barassing to the experimenter. 
The rewards of such researches, I have said, are as solid as 
they are brilliant. They will increase the fortune of their 
successful prosecutor, while they will establish his fame. 
They will bring with them, moreover, a richer and more 
heartfelt reward in the pleasures of a life, with its leisure 
hours devoted to the calm and pure pursuits of science, enno- 
bling the character by raising it above that all-absorbing de- 
votion to money, which is the curse and the shame of our 
country, and by teaching that there are other goods — the culti- 
vation of virtue and morality, and the delights of learning- 
far to be prized above the evanescent glare of wealth. 
Upon you and your fellow graduates — ^young men — must 
