EDITORIAL. 
2S7 
Patent Medicine Tax. — Among the ways and means resorted to 
by our State authorities to increase the revenue, is a tax laid on the 
sale of secret or quack medicines, as has long been the usage in 
England. We have been informed that this law originated at the 
suggestion of some physicians, who supposed it would bear more 
specially on empirics and their nostrums, but the executors of 
the law have interpreted it to apply to all who sell prepa- 
rations made by secret formulas, as Henry's and Husband's Magne- 
sia, McMunn's Elixir, and others prescribed by physicians. Now as 
there are druggists who feel a desire to discourage quackery, and act up 
to their profession by refusing to sell secret medicines in general, and 
yet necessarily keep such preparations as the above, it is unjust that 
they should be taxed as though they were general dealers in nostrums. 
The Druggists General Receipt Book: containing numerous recipes for 
patent and proprietary medicines, druggists'' nostrums, fyc. ; factitious 
mineral waters, and powders for preparing them ; with a veterinary 
formulary and table of the Veterinary Materia Medica ; also recipes for 
perfumery and cosmetics, beverages, dietetic articles and condiments ; trade 
chemicals, miscellaneous compounds, used in the arts, domestic economy, 
fyc. ; with useful tables and memoranda. By Henry Beasley. Philad., 
Lindsay & Blakistou, 1850. Octavo, pp. 386. 
The title of Dr. Beasley's book tells its character; it is in fact a clus- 
ter of recipes for medicines, perfumery, soap making, paints, cos- 
metics, in fact for a thousand things useful and useless, which have 
become more or less identified with the drug business, and as a book 
of reference will often be found useful to business men. 
Obituary. — We have to announce the death of Dr. Robert 
Eglesfeld Griffith, in the 53d year of his age, at his residence on 
Chestnut street in this city. 
Dr. Griffith has long been known as a medical writer and teacher, 
as well as for his general scientific attainments, especially in botany 
and conchology. In 1831, on the death of Dr. Benjamin Ellis, he as- 
sumed the Editorship of this Journal, then known as the 11 Journal of 
the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy," and conducted it until 1836. 
In the spring of 1835, on the election of Dr. Wood to the University, 
he was appointed to the vacant chair of Materia Medica in the School 
of Pharmacy, where he delivered one course of lectures. The follow- 
ing year Dr. Griffith was elected to the same chair in the University 
of Maryland, which he occupied several years, and subsequently ac- 
cepted a lectureship in the University of Virginia. His health, 
