AmjJune"i87h7arm'}  Proposed  Changes  in  the  Pharmacopoeia.  275 
accorded  to  this  proposition  (p.  33.)  the  writer  labors  as  unaptly,  as 
ungraciously  to  maintain  the  curious  thesis  that  the  able  and  distin- 
guished men  who  so  conscientiously  and  industriously  served  on  the 
earlier  Committees  of  Revision  did  not  contribute  their  voluntary  and 
unpaid  toil,  as  has  generally  been  supposed,  but  that  they  did  their 
work  well  only  because  indirectly  they  were  well  paid  ! 
"  When  the  work  was  mainly  and  so  admirably  done  by  Drs.  Wood 
and  Bache  in  the  past,  it  was  well  and  amply  paid  for  by  the  subordina- 
tion [!]  of  the  Pharmacopoeia  to  the  Dispensatory  of  these  authors, 
which  latter  as  a  private  book  of  its  authors  has  been  deservedly  one 
of  the  most  popular,  most  useful  and  most  lucrative  books  of  the  age." 
(p.  11.)  And  this  Dispensatory  "  overshadowed  as  well  as  embraced 
the  Pharmacopoeia,  so  that  comparatively  few  persons  knew  of  the 
existence  of  the  latter  as  a  separate  and  as  the  authoritative  book. 
Hence  the  success  of  the  Pharmacopoeia  depended  on  its  trustworthi- 
ness and  utility  to  the  profession,  and  these  qualities  were  only  realized 
through  the  Dispensatory  and  its  authors  ;  and  they,  by  the  pecuniary 
success  of  their  books  were  well  paid  for  their  labors  on  both  books  !" 
(P-  33-) 
This  is  surely  an  extraordinary  allegation  to  sustain  a  theory.  The 
Pharmacopoeia  was  "  eminently  successful  and  sufficient  up  to  i850or 
i860,"  because  two  of  its  laborious  revisers  "subordinated"  it  to  a 
Dispensatory  !  "  Its  trustworthiness  and  utility  to  the  profession  " 
were  secured  by  its  being  comparatively  unknown  and  "  over- 
shadowed "  by  the  "  private  book  of  its  authors "  !  Well  may 
it  be  said  that  the  incoherence  of  logic  in  these  remarkable  utter- 
ances is  equaled  only  by  the  inaccuracy  of  their  assumptions.  What 
possible  meaning  can  be  attached  to  the  phrase  "  the  subordination  of 
the  Pharmacopoeia  to  the  Dispensatory  "  ?  And  in  what  possible  way 
could  the  "  admirable  "  work  on  the  former  be  "  amply  paid  for"  by 
such  subordination  ?  Has  some  ingenious  prestigiation  been  suc- 
cessful— at  the  same  time — in  "  admirably  doing  "  the  Pharmacopoeia 
and  in  leaving  it  helpless  and  undone  ?  Such  would  seem  to  be  the 
inevitable  implication.  Referring  to  the  first  appearance  of  the  Dis- 
pensatory as  a  commentary  on  the  Pharmacopoeia  of  1830,  our  author 
says  :  "  From  that  time  the  Pharmacopoeia  became  a  mere  skeleton  or 
outline  of  the  materia  medica,  and  was  of  so  little  use  without  the 
Dispensatory — while  this  latter  embraced  its  text  with  very  much  other 
