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REVIEW. 
cannot fail being exceedingly useful. Such a work may be said 
to be a cyclopaedia of Pharmacy and its accessory branches, which, 
in a single volume, will afford the condensed matter of a phar- 
maceutical library. 
" L'officine," in the words of Mr. Dorvault, " is not a scientific 
work ; but one of more modest pretensions ; it is a work of pa- 
tience ! Pharmacy as a science, had already been enriched by men 
of talents and reputation, with numerous treatises embracing, some, 
all the branches in a general point of view ; others, limited to 
special subjects; but practical pharmacy, or in other words, the 
pharmacy of the shop, did not possess as yet a single work, in 
which could be found, collected together in a suitable form, all the 
various and numberless kinds of information that are indispensable 
in the shop practice." 
It is with a view to supply this deficiency, that Mr. Dorvault 
ably and industriously exerted himself in collecting together, so 
as to form a complete ensemble, all the useful matter that could be 
found disseminated in numerous special works, or were suggested 
by his own experience. How far he has succeeded in his under- 
taking may be inferred from the fact, that the first edition of the 
Offlcine was brought forth in 1844, and the third in 1850. 
A work so obviously useful, and so extensive in its various sub- 
jects, could not attain its aim, unless all its parts were arranged in 
a methodical form, of easy and prompt access to the inquirer. 
This, the author has endeavored to realize, by dividing the work 
in different parts. The first, headed Prolegomenes , contains all the 
information particularly required for the proper understanding of 
the matters that are treated in the succeeding divisions. It con- 
tains 56 pages embracing the following subjects, viz. 
Weights and Measures, or a full exposition of the French deci- 
mal system, with a good notice of European weights and measures, 
and a table of their respective value compared with the French 
decimals. 
Hydrometers and Thermometers. — Their description, with rules 
for rendering the different scales ; tables of specific gravity ; tables 
of concordance of the three principal thermometers ; tables of the 
points of fusion, ebullition and dilatation of the different bodies; and 
tables of frigorific mixtures. 
Selection of simple drugs, in which is given the period most 
