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SELECTED ARTICLES. 
petent knowledge of at least the following branches, — namely, 
Latin, Chemistry, Botany, Practical Chemistry, Practical 
Pharmacy, and Materia Medica. 4. Licentiates of the col- 
lege should be required to abandon medical and surgical prac- 
tice. 5. It is not conceived to be at all necessary or even 
advisable, that all chemists and druggists should be compelled 
to apply for a license. Entrance into the body may be safely 
left optional, at all events for some time, — but with the 
condition, that every unlicensed person who may assume the 
title appropriated to the licentiates of the body, shall by doing 
so incur a severe penalty. 
2. The second measure by which the frequency of adulte- 
rations may be in some measure checked, is, by our colleges 
of physicians adopting in their Pharmacopoeias an addition, by 
means of which the attention of practitioners and of druggists 
may be pointedly turned to the most simple and accurate 
criterions for determining the requisite purity of drugs, and 
their freedom from certain known impurities. An alteration 
of this kind was resolved on a few years ago by the Edin- 
burgh College of Physicians, and was proposed by them to the 
sister college of London, in the course of certain negotiations 
towards the establishment of a conjunct or National Pharma- 
copoeia. The London college, though apparently disinclined 
to the change at first, have since endeavored to adopt it in the 
late edition of their Pharmacopoeia. But, if the present were 
a fit occasion for criticising that publication, it would not be 
difficult to show that this department of it is not exactly fitted 
for the practical purposes here contemplated. 
From such attention as I have been able to give to this sub- 
ject, I feel assured that a set of rules may be devised for al- 
most every important drug, mineral, vegetable, and animal, 
which any one may apply with the ordinary knowledge of 
practical chemistry now acquired by every medical student 
educated at the school of this city, and by means of which it 
may be ascertained that the customary adulterations are ab- 
sent, and each article of the requisite degree of purity. It is 
