As"pte°mbe?fia89™"}    British  Pharmaceutical  Conference.  499 
The  application  of  the  pharmacist's  art  can  and  should  in  numerous  ways  help  him  much 
more  than  is  the  case  at  present,  although  great  advances  have  been  made  in  this  respect 
within  the  period  I  have  been  considering." 
The  President  deplored  in  a  somewhat  radical  manner  the  lack  of  a  knowledge  of  phar- 
macology on  the  part  of  medical  men,  but  placed  the  blame  with  the  conjoint  board  of  the 
Royal  Colleges  of  Physicians  and  Surgeons  of  London. 
"  For  their  examination  there  is  now  no  stipulated  time  required  to  be  devoted  to  the  sub- 
jects of  pharmac3'  and  materia  medica,  or  even  to  chemistry.  All  that  is  necessary  is  that  the 
students'  schedules  are  signed.  There  is  no  examination  at  all  in  practical  dispensing,  and 
now  there  is  no  separate  examination  in  pharmacology,  which  may  be  defined  as  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  physiological  and  therapeutic  action  of  drugs,  or  the  action  of  medicinal  agents 
on  the  body  in  health  and  disease,  so  that  a  student  may  pass  his  qualifying  examination,  in 
which  this  subject — pharmacology — only  forms  a  section  of  Part  I  (Medicine),  knowing  com- 
paratively little  or  nothing  of  it.  .  .  .  This  new  departure  is  certainly  casting  discredit  on 
the  use  of  medicine  as  a  factor  in  the  healing  art.  'In  five  or  six  years  hence,'  a  medical 
writer  has  said,  '  we  shall  have  growing  up  around  us  men,  who  from  sheer  timidity,  will 
rarely  venture  to  prescribe  anything  but  the  simplest  remedies,'  and  'the  unfortunate  quali- 
fied practitioner,'  after  devoting  'the  best  years  of  his  life  to  the  acquirement  of  much  use- 
less knowledge  .  .  .  ignorant  of  the  means  of  alleviating  the  sufferings  of  his  patients, 
will,  in  despair,  fall  back  on  the  preparations  of  the  advertising  chemist.'  " 
The  speaker  concluded  his  address  after  mention  of  the  subject  of  the  organic  serums, 
lymphs  and  animal  extracts  in  connection  with  the  future  of  pharmacy,  by  referring  in  an 
eulogistic  manner  to  the  labors  of  Pasteur,  Darwin  and  Huxley  on  biology,  and  indirectly  on 
medicine,  surgery  and  pharmacy. 
The  President's  address  occupied  thirty-three  minutes,  after  which  followed  the  reception 
of  delegates,  the  reports  of  the  Executive  Committee,  Treasurer  and  Formulary  Committee. 
The  preliminary  exercises  having  been  concluded,  the  next  in  order  was  the 
reading  of  original  communications.  • 
The  first  was  on 
THE  PHARMACY  OF  CONIUM  MACULATUM. 
By  F.  H.  Farr  and  R.  Wright. 
The  authors  gave  quite  an  extensive  resume  of  the  history  of  conium,  the 
reputation  of  which  as  a  remedial  agent  seems  to  have  been  in  a  state  of  fluc- 
tuation from  ancient  times  to  the  present,  when  it  is  again  falling  into  disre- 
pute among  medical  men,  due  chiefly  to  the  fact  that  most  of  the  pharmaceu- 
tical preparations  of  the  drug  are  practically  inert.  The  statement  was  made 
that  up  to  the  year  1887  no  work  had  been  done  on  the  pharmaceutical  side  of 
the  subject  at  all  commensurate  with  that  accomplished  on  the  medical  side. 
In  that  year  the  method  of  Cripps  for  determining  gravimetrically  the  value 
of  conium,  which  consists  in  the  isolation  of  the  alkaloids  and  their  conver- 
sion into  hydrochlorates,  was  devised,  and  was  subsequently  adopted  by  the 
authors  in  their  investigations  of  the  drug  and  its  preparations.  It  was  with 
the  object  of  adding  to  the  more  definite  knowledge  of  conium  from  the  phan- 
maceutical  standpoint  that  the  work  described  in  the  paper  was  undertaken. 
Specimens  of  the  hemlock  plant  were  selected  at  different  stages  of  its  growth, 
and  the  alkaloidal  value  of  the  different  parts  determined.  The  results  were 
as  given  in  the  following  table,  which  shows  the  percentages  of  alkaloidal 
hydrochlorates  : 
