2i8  Comments  on  Magendie's  Formulary,    j^""  Tiri^YJm 
After  commenting  upon  Magendie's  observations  concerning  the 
use  of  these  'Vegetable  alkalis,"  which  were  not  yet  called  "alka- 
loids," the  translator  continues,  in  partial  disagreement,  as  follows: 
"There  exists,  however,  an  objection  to  the  principle  of  thus  iso- 
lating and  concentrating  the  active  part  of  our  remedies.  Perhaps 
every  practitioner  feels  that  medicinal  substances  are  more  efficacious 
as  they  are  presented  to  us  combined  by  the  Hand  of  Nature,  than 
when  their  active  part  is  isolated  and  recombined  by  the  hand  of 
man.  Thus,  then  we  are  all  inclined  to  give  our  remedies  in  sub- 
stance, as  it  is  called,  rather  than  as  prepared  by  the  chemist  or  the 
druggist,  and  we  are  only  deterred  from  using  these  natural  prepara- 
tions by  the  greater  bulk,  and  other  inconvenient  properties  of  them, 
as  compared  with  our  more  artificial  preparations.  Thus,  also,  we 
all  feel  that  our  artificial  mineral  waters,  however  accurately  they 
may  imitate  the  natural  ones,  do  not  produce  the  same  good  effect 
as  those  natural  ones  do;  and  even  some  of  them,  for  instance,  the 
bath  waters,  appear  on  analysis  to  be  so  pure  and  free  from  extraneous 
ingredients  that  we  are  reduced  to  the  necessity  of  attributing  their 
often  powerful  effects  to  the  presence  of  some  evanescent  principle, 
which  cannot  be  detected  by  chemical  analysis." 
Is  this  latter  thought  a  prophecy  of  the  discovery  of  radio  ac- 
tivity? In  this  paragraph,  too,  the  use  of  the  word  chemist  as  ap- 
plied by  an  American  translator  to  one  who  is  concerned  with  the 
preparation  of  medicines,  indicates  again  the  close  correlation  at 
that  time  between  chemistry  and  pharmacy.  The  word  pharmacist 
was  not  then  in  general  use  in  America  and  the  word  chemist  here 
seems  to  be  used  synonymously  with  the  word  apothecary  of  the 
earlier  paragraph. 
In  another  paragraph  the  translator  mirrors  the  sentiment  of  the 
times  with  respect  to  new  remedies  in  a  way  that  shows  conditions 
to  have  been  much  as  they  are  now,  he  says,  speaking  of  himself  in 
the  third  person  as  was  the  custom : 
"He  is  almost  angry  when  he  sees  the  popular  authors  of  the  day 
sneering  at  the  introduction  of  new  remedies  and  saying  in  ignorant 
self  conceit,  *Ay,  here  they  come,  one  after  another,  vaunted  to  the 
skies  for  properties  which  sober  investigation  shows  not  to  belong 
to  them;  we  shall  soon  see  them  laid  upon  the  shelf  until  they  are 
again  held  up  to  the  world  as  prodigies  by  some  future  enthusiastic 
searchers  after  novelty.'  " 
I  wonder  whether  any  other  work  ever  heralded  as  new  remedies 
