AmirJa°rcb)S106.rilQ-}        Professor  John  Attfield,  F.R.S.  107 
ence  for  good  of  Professor  Attfield's  life  has  rested."  He  was  after- 
wards President  of  the  Conference  in  1882-4. 
Professor  Attfield  was  now  in  the  prime  of  life  and  was  about  to 
embark  on  those  pharmacopceial  labors  which  were  to  form  so  great 
a  part  of  his  life's  work.  But  the  scope  of  his  activities  throughout 
has  been  very  wide.  In  1864-5  he  devoted  considerable  time 
to  a  revision  of  much  of  the  chemistry  of  Brand's  "  Dictionary  of 
Art,  Science  and  Literature,"  and  in  1866  he  found  time  to  revise 
and  extend  the  chemical  portion  of  the  fourth  edition  of  Clegg's 
work  on  the  "  Manufacture  and  Distribution  of  Coal  Gas."  The 
value  of  the  metric  system  appealed  forcibly  to  his  practical  mind. 
He  keenly  advocated  its  adoption  in  this  country  in  place  of  our 
complex  system  of  weights  and  measures,  and  at  one  time  occupied 
a  seat  in  the  Council  of  the  Metric  Decimal  Association.  In  addi- 
tion he  has  published  seventy  original  papers,  the  majority  dealing 
•with  the  results  of  his  researches  in  chemistry  and  pharmacy,  a  list 
of  which,  to  the  year  1894,  is  given  in  Reber's  "  Gallerie  hervor- 
ragender  Therapeutiker  und  Pharmakognosten." 
Professor  Attfield  was,  in  1882,  appointed  by  the  General  Medical 
Council  to  be  one  of  the  three  editors  of  the  1885  edition  of  the 
British  Pharmacopoeia.  After  the  appearance  of  that  work  he 
became  successively  annual  reporter  on  the  Pharmacopoeia  to  the 
Medical  Council,  sole  editor  of  the  "  Addendum "  of  1890,  of  the 
M  British  Pharmacopoeia  "  of  1898,  and  of  the  "  Indian  and  Colonial 
Addendum  "  of  1900.  The  first  digest  of  criticisms  of  the  1898 
Pharmacopoeia  was  edited  by  him  in  1900,  this  being  his  last  work 
in  the  capacity  of  "  Reporter  on  the  Progress  of  Pharmacy  and  Ad- 
viser on  Pharmaceutical  Chemistry."  To  him  is  due  the  union  of 
pharmacists  with  the  physicians  in  the  compilation  of  the  Pharma- 
copoeia. He  was  the  originator,  in  1886,  of  the  conversion  of  the 
hitherto  nationally  compiled  Pharmacopoeia  into  an  imperially  com- 
piled Pharmacopoeia.  He  himself  largely  organized  the  imperializa- 
tion  of  the  Pharmacopoeia.  The  carrying  out  of  this  editorial  work 
was  a  delight  to  one  so  gifted  with  organizing  powers.  It  would 
occupy  too  much  space  to  detail  here  the  complex  machinery 
which  he  set  in  motion.  The  story  of  the  making  of  a  Pharma- 
copoeia would  in  itself  form  instructive  and  interesting  material  for 
a  separate  article.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  the  Pharmacopoeia 
was  divided  into  seven  sections,  and  of  some  of  these  as  many 
