QlMtorial department 
The Report of a joint Committee of the Philadelphia County Medical 
Society, and the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, relative to physician's 
prescriptions, published in our last number as adopted by the College of 
Pharmacy, was on the 20th of January unanimously adopted by the County 
Medical Society with the following proviso, viz : 
" That nothing therein contained shall be construed into any sanction or 
countenance, direct or indirect, on the part of this Society, of the manufacture, 
sale, or use, by any one under any pretext, of quack or secret medicines" 
Wild Cherry Bark. — We would call the attention of druggists and 
apothecaries to the important fact, determined in the essay on Wild Cherry 
Bark at page 109, that the Autumn is the proper period for collecting this 
bark, as at that season the proximate principles which give rise to its most 
important medicinal power, are then most abundantly secreted. 
American Narcotic Extracts. — The Essay at page 111, on the Extracts 
of European Narcotics of American growth, has peculiar interest to the 
Physicians and Pharmaceutists of this country, and we hope the subject 
will be continued on a larger scale and during a longer period. We should 
not be indebted to Europe for these agents, when the material for preparing 
them is at our doors. 
Poisoning by Bichloride of Mercury. A Broken Staff. — Dr. C , 
of Roxbury, in a communication to the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 
for Feb. 25th, details the treatment in a case of poisoning where the patient, 
Mrs. T , had swallowed about a teaspoonful of corrosive sublimate. 
It appears that Dr. C , when called in, was informed that the patient 
had swallowed the poison, and he at once administered a drachm and a half 
of sal seratus (impure bicarbonate of potassa) in half a pint of water, the 
object of which, he observes, "itwillbe at once perceived was to form a chemi- 
cal union of the alkali with the acid of the poison and thus render the mercury 
comparatively harmless" (/) After repeating this prescription, and finding 
his patient still vomiting, he directed the whites of a dozen eggs to be given 
as fast as the circumstances would admit, followed hjfonr and water. 
We here learn for the first time that such a solution of bicarbonate of po- 
tassa will saturate the acid of corrosive sublimate, or decompose it immediately 
in any way so as to produce an inert compound; and we cannot but admire 
the wisdom displayed by Dr. C. in giving the real antidotes along with the 
spurious one ; yet as the suggestion may meet the eyes of other physicians, 
not more familiar with chemical reactions than its author, and perhaps in- 
duce them to waste important time by depending on it, we have felt it a 
