446  Reviews  and  Bibliographical  Notices. 
never  could  quite  understand  the  necessity  of  having  so  many  kinds,  as  I  have 
foeen  positively  informed  by  the  discoverer  of  the  original  pain-killer  that  it 
was  the  best  medicine  ever  discovered  for  every  disease  except  worms,  and  as 
good  for  worms  as  anything  else. 
"  Mr.  President,  I  have  stated  that  more  than  two-thirds  of  all  the  medicine 
sold  in  this  country  is  in  the  shape  of  patent  medicine  or  nostrums.  You  may 
infer,  if  you  please,  that  this  state  of  things  exists  from  that  universal  law  of 
demand  and  supply.  I  also  stated  that  your  Society  or  ours  can  do  very  little 
toward  restraining  or  controlling  traffic  in  this  form  ;  the  great  bulk  of  this 
business  has  been  developed  outside  of,  if  not  in  opposition  to,  the  drug  business. 
The  demand  for  nostrums  is  created  by  direct  appeals  or  advertisements 
directed  to  physicians  and  the  public,  I  may  say.  in  spite  of  apothecaries  aid  or 
influence,  although  all  apothecaries  supply  the  demands  upon  them  for  these 
articles.  And  so  great  is  the  demand  for  them,  that  one  proprietor,  in  answer 
to  some  inquiries  I  made  of  him  a  short  time  since,  wrote  to  me  that  he  paid 
the  United  ritates  government  $120,000  per  annum  for  stamps  alone.  If  you 
will  multiply  this  amount  by  25,  it  will  give  you  the  amount  of  his  sales,  retail 
value  $3,000,000  ;  and  if  you  divide  this  amount  by  3,  it  might,  and  probably 
does,  give  the  yearly  income  of  $1,000,000,  which  is  more  than  all  the  profit 
on  drugs  sold  in  this  city  in  the  regular  way. 
"Now,  the  point  I  make  is  this  :  educate  as  many  honest  young  men  as  you 
will,  and  let  them  know  enough  to  be  able  to  get  the  degree  of  graduate  in 
pharmacy  from  the  Massachusetts  College  of  Pharmacy,  and  no  one  of  them 
ever  will,  or  can,  become  a  successful  nostrum  proprietor.  And  this  is  the 
policy  we,  as  a  college,  are  pursuing;  we  attend  to  our  own  business,  do  our 
work  faithfully,  and  educate  our  young  men  not  only  to  do  the  same,  but  to 
look  after  the  men  and  medicines  that  are  not  up  to  the  standard  quality,  for 
our  own  and  our  customer's  protection  and  benefit,  and  do  not  propose  for  the 
present  to  keep  houses  of  reformation  for  our  neighbors  or  do  police  duty." 
KEVIEWS  AND  BIBLI0 GEAPHI0  AL  NOTICES. 
Nouveaux  Elements  de  Pharmacie.  Par  A.  Andouard,  Pharmacien,  Profes- 
seur  de  Chimie  a  1'Ecole  de  Medecine  et  de  Pharmacie  de  Nantes.  Paris  : 
J.  B.  Bailliere  et  Fils,  1874.  1  vol.  in  8vo  de  xxiv — 884  pages  avec  120  fig- 
ures intercalees  dans  le  texte.    14  francs. 
New  Elements  of  Pharmacy.  By  A.  Andouard,  Pharmacist  and  Professor 
of  Chemistry,  &c. 
The  work  is  divided  into  twenty-eight  chapters,  the  first  of  which  treats  of 
the  pharmaceutical  manipulations,  which,  though  occupying  only  forty-three 
pages,  are  well  described,  and  a  number  of  apparatus  and  simple  contrivances 
are  mentioned  and  illustrated  which  are  but  little  known  in  this  country.  From 
our  standpoint,  we  find  the  paragraph  on  percolation,  which  is  treated  under 
lixiviation,  too  short;  but  it  is  well  to  remember  that  this  process  has  nowhere 
received  the  attention  and  patient  investigation  which  has  been  accorded  to  it 
on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic. 
The  following  five  chapters  treat  of  the  mineral  medicaments,  namely,  ele- 
ments, neutral  bodies  (water  and  nitrous  oxide),  mineral  acids,  alkalies  and 
metallic  oxides,  salts,  which  latter  are  arranged  according  to  their  acids.  The 
