AmAJp°rnr;i903arra'}     Reviews  and  Bibliographical  Notices.  191 
medical  literature  and  from  the  author's  personal  experience  in 
practice. 
This  interesting  and  valuable  work  is  only  marred  by  the  author's 
frequent  reference  to  "  the  objectional  practises  of  pharmaceutists," 
which  appears  to  be  based  on  some  prejudice  rather  than  on  good 
reason.  Dr.  Potter  says,  "  many  dispensing  pharmaceutists  are  in 
the  habit  of  making  infusions  from  concentrated  alcoholic  tinct- 
ures or  from  fluid  extracts.  It  is  a  very  reprehensible  practice, 
especially  in  those  cases  where  the  active  ingredients  are  of  a  resin- 
ous nature,  and  therefore  precipitate  when  the  alcoholic  solution  is 
added  to  water."  The  infusions  he  mentions  are  of  cinchona,  digi- 
talis, wild  cherry  and  compound  senna.  None  of  these  drugs  con- 
tain resins,  and,  we  may  add,  there  are  many  apothecaries  that  we 
know  throughout  the  United  States  who  would  not  think  of  making 
these  or  other  infusions  except  directly  from  the  drug. 
On  page  554  Dr.  Potter  says,  "  the  drug  store  of  the  present  day 
has  degenerated  so  much  from  its  legitimate  business  that  ere  long 
physicians  will  be  compelled  in  self-defense  to  dispense  their  own 
medicines,  thereby  protecting  themselves  and  their  patients  from 
the  patent-medicine  vending,  the  counter-prescribing  and  the  many 
other  nefarious  methods  which  have  degraded  the  pharmacist  from 
his  old  professional  position  to  that  of  a  mere  trader  in  drugs  and 
nostrums."  Again,  on  page  546,  Dr.  Potter  says,  "  it  is  doubtless  a 
fact  familiar  to  every  observer  that  the  old-time  confidential  rela» 
tions  between  the  professions  of  physician  and  pharmacist  have 
almost  passed  into  oblivion.  In  fact,  the  tendency  of  pharmacy 
nowadays  is  toward  the  position  of  mere  money-making  trade, 
instead  of  in  the  exalted  direction  of  a  profession.  The  indis- 
criminate renewing  of  prescriptions,  the  open  sale  of  quack  nos- 
trums and  homeopathic  pellets,  the  readiness  with  which  counter- 
prescribing  is  indulged  in,  the  insinuations  too  frequently  made  over 
the  drug-counter  in  reflection  on  physicians,  and  many  other  similar 
practices,  have  caused  the  non-combatant  pro'ession  to  regard  the 
average  druggist  with  suspicion."  All  these  statements  seem  very 
strange  and  irrelevant  in  a  text-book,  and  were  they  in  accord  with 
facts  we  would  admit  it  to  be  a  lamentable  condition  of  affairs; 
but  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  they  can  exist  in  any  part  of  the 
United  States  other  than  in  the  mind  of  him  who  writes,  and  we 
cannot  help  but  believe  that  Dr.  Potter  is  either  misinformed  or  he 
