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SELECTED ARTICLES. 13 
doctors or hakkins, the druggists or pharmaciens, and the 
barbers or surgeons. The pharmaciens have small shops in 
the bazaars, where drugs are exposed for retail, which consist, 
for the most part, of dried herbs, of plants for fomentations, 
infusions, and decoctions, and these are the most lucrative 
articles of the profession; within a few years, they have re- 
ceived, by way of Georgia, small parcels of chemical agents 
fabricated in Europe, especially at Moscow, such as the 
sulphates of iron and copper, sulphate of quinia, alum, 
borax, tartaric acid, bitartrate of polassa, the carbonates 
of soda and potassa. Calomel is sometimes found in their 
shops, which they call white powder, but only in the best 
provided are to be found the antimonial preparations; they 
likewise possess euphorbium, elaterium, castor oil, senna, 
rhubarb, gum arabic, and a number of aromatic herbs, which 
are procured in the mountainous districts. 
The only formulary possessed by the pharmaciens, or 
Persian druggists, which is still in manuscript, is that of 
Noureddin Mahomet, Mdalla-hakkin, AineUMelek-Shi- 
ragi ; in it are to be found numerous insignificant and 
useless substances. It has been evidently compiled from 
Greek, Latin, and Arabian authors. The department in 
which they possess the most information, is that of poisons, 
the largest proportion of which appears to belong to the 
vegetable kingdom, although the^ know how to employ 
arsenic, and the deutochloride of mercury. They obtain the 
latter from Tiflis in Georgia. They are generally the passive 
agents of their princes, who pay them well for the criminal 
service of poisoning; in order the better to conceal their pro- 
ceedings, they unite them with astrological predictions, so 
that the victim is led to attribute the result to the terrible 
and extraordinary action of certain unfavorable conjunctions 
of the stars, which exercise a deadly and destructive influence 
upon him. The Persian apothecaries preserve the most pro- 
found secrecy as to the nature of their poisonous combina- 
tions; those only which are known, are arsenious acid, cor- 
rosive sublimate, cinnabar, opium, the powder of the diamond 
