Am.  Jour.  Pharro.  \ 
January,  1903.  J 
Obituary. 
45 
him  to  retire  from  the  practice  of  pharmacy,  in  1882,  he  had  at  his 
command  an  array  of  experiences  and  facts  that  proved  the  basis  of 
many  of  his  subsequent  interesting  and  valuable  contributions  to 
pharmaceutical  literature. 
From  Frankfurt  he  went  to  Berlin,  but  later  removed  to  Dresden 
so  as  to  be  with  his  only  daughter,  the  wife  of  Dr.  Alfred  Schneider. 
While  the  last  twenty  years  of  his  life  formed  the  period  of 
Hirsch's  greatest  literary  activity,  he  had  for  many  years  been  a 
liberal  contributor  to  the  contemporaneous  literature  of  pharmacy, 
particularly  through  the  pharmaceutical  journals  of  his  own  country, 
and  as  early  as  1847  the  publication  of  a  critical  study,  comparing 
the  filth  and  sixth  editions  of  the  Prussian  Pharmacopoeias,  gave  an 
indication  of  the  natural  trend  of  his  studies  and  observations. 
It  is  along  this  particular  line,  the  critical,  comparative  study  of 
the  development  and  contents  of  the  various  national  pharmaco- 
poeias, that  Dr.  Hirsch  has  been  particularly  successful,  and  in  which 
he  was  the  acknowledged  master. 
Hirsch  published  a  number  of  commentary  studies  relating  to  the 
various  editions  of  the  Prussian  and  later  the  Imperial  German 
Pharmacopoeia,  and  in  1891,  in  collaboration  with  his  son-in-law, 
Dr.  Schneider,  published  the  first  edition  of  the  then  Hirsch- 
Schneider  commentary  on  the  third  edition  of  the  German  Phar- 
macopoeia. This  book  was  immediately  and  deservedly  popular, 
and  has  but  recently  been  revised,  the  third  edition  being  just  from 
the  press. 
The  work  that  was  most  congenial  to  Hirsch,  and  the  one  that 
will  no  doubt  result  in  the  greatest  good  and  the  most  lasting  bene- 
fits, is  the  collation  of  the  Universal  Pharmacopbe.  The  first 
edition  of  this  work  was  begun  in  1884,  and  completed  three  years 
later,  while  the  second  edition,  but  lately  completed,  was  the  last 
work  of  this  venerable  pharmaceutical  writer.  In  the  preface  to 
this  second  edition,  dated  end  of  June,  1902,  Dr.  Hirsch  says, "  May 
the  last  work  of  a  man  that  has  devoted  his  whole  life  to  the  inter- 
ests of  pharmacy,  and  who  is  now  standing  at  the  close  of  his  life, 
meet  with  kindly  review  and  criticisms." 
This  appeal  was  hardly  needed,  as  the  work  referred  to  is  not 
alone  of  gigantic  proportions,  but  despite  the  physical  sufferings  of 
the  author  and  the  natural  infirmities  that  accompany  old  age,  the 
amount  of  collected  material,  as  well  as  the  method,  and  the  gener- 
