Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  \ 
April,  1908.  J 
Book  Reviews. 
187 
serve  as  a  guarantee  of  the  up-to-date  character  and  the  general 
reliability  of  the  information  that  is  presented  under  this  heading. 
An  innovation  that  should  contribute  materially  to  the  populari- 
zation of  the  Metric  System  with  English-speaking  people  is  the 
introduction  of  the  term  "  mil  "  to  represent  the  one-thousandth  part 
of  a  liter,  in  place  of  the  more  cumbersome  and  less  practical  cubic 
centimeter. 
In  this  connection  it  may  be  pointed  out  that  despite  the  fact  that 
the  word  "  mil,"  a  contraction  for  milliliter,  has  been  officially  recog- 
nized as  being  permissible,  no  serious  attempt  has  ever  been  made 
to  introduce  it  in  this  country,  and  the  renewed  prominence  that  is 
given  it  in  the  Codex  may  serve  to  popularize  it  in  American 
medical  and  pharmaceutical  literature. 
One  might  go  on  at  great  length,  pointing  out  the  interesting 
features  that  are  to  be  found  in  this  particular  book,  but  enough  has 
been  said  to  indicate  that  the  Pharmaceutical  Society  of  Great 
Britain  has  once  more  demonstrated  its  right  to  continue  as  an 
educator  not  alone  of  students  of  pharmacy  and  of  members  of  the 
Society,  but  also  of  pharmacists  and  physicians  generally. 
That  a  book  that  portends  to  be  so  exhaustive,  so  original  and  so 
far-reaching  as  this,  would  of  necessity  contain  many  errors  of  a 
minor  nature  that  were  overlooked  in  the  final  reading  of  proof,  is  to 
be  expected,  and  the  Committee  in  charge  of  the  publication  are  to 
be  congratulated  that  these  mistakes  are  not  more  serious  and  more 
numerous  than  the  carping  critics  in  England  have  been  able  to 
find.  As  it  is,  they  are  practically  all  enumerated  in  a  table  of 
errata  in  the  front  part  of  the  book. 
The  British  Pharmaceutical  Codex  will  certainly  serve  to 
strengthen  the  position  of  the  Pharmaceutical  Society  of  Great 
Britain,  and  will  further  serve  to  define  the  relations  that  should 
exist  between  the  pharmacist  and  the  physician  on  the  one  hand, 
and  the  pharmacist  and  the  public  on  the  other. 
The  book  should  be  of  peculiar  interest  to  the  physician,  in  that 
it  contains  more  than  the  usual  amount  of  information  directly  of 
interest  to  medical  practitioners,  and  for  the  pharmacist  it  will  serve 
to  answer  many  thousands  of  questions  that  arise  constantly  in  the 
laboratory  and  at  the  prescription  counter. 
M.  I.  Wilbert. 
