504  Review  of  Chemistry  of  the  U.S.P.  {^'S^T.' 
lection  of  the  dim  past ;  but  the  Eighth  Decennial  Revision  can  fit  in 
any  year  very  nicely.  Five  years  the  commission  has  waited  to 
bring  forth  the  work ;  could  they  not  have  waited  five  months  from 
publication  to  make  the  work  official  ?  Germany's  Pharmacopceial 
Commission  was  called  together  in  January ;  in  June  the  work  was 
published;  the  following  January  it  became  obligatory.  But 
Germany  has  a  moderate-sized  work  ;  it  is  kept  abreast  of  the  times; 
it  makes  its  appearance  every  five  years. 
The  reason  for  this  delay  cannot  be  justly  charged  to  the  large 
amount  of  work  done  by  the  commission,  as  the  book  fails  to  reveal 
it.  The  system  of  general  voting  on  every  dot  and  every  I  by  the 
whole  committee  has  taken  up  the  time.  I  cannot  see  the  reason 
for  the  pharmacists  passing  on  the  chemical  data,  nor  why  they, 
whose  profession  is  materia  medica,  should  lose  sleep  over  the 
smears  of  the  druggists.  The  commission  had  excellent  men  repre- 
senting every  branch  of  pharmacy ;  why  could  they  not  have  fol- 
lowed the  modern  method  of  division  of  labor.  Imagine  some  of 
the  druggists  worrying  over  that  ancient  theory  of  artiads  and  peris- 
sads  when  the  question  of  FtCI3  or  Fe2Cl6  was  gravely  discussed  ; 
'tis  sad  !  It  is  my  belief  that  the  work  would  have  been  better  and 
more  prompt  in  its  appearance,  if  a  plan,  as  intimated  above,  had 
been  followed. 
As  to  changes  in  nomenclature,  the  committee  was  conservative ; 
they  believe  in  one  English  language.  In  this  we  should  commend 
them.  We  have  tried  to  learn  the  mother  tongue ;  to  be  com- 
pelled to  do  this  work  over  again  would  cause  much  worry.  How 
this  so  called  American-English  can  be  a  matter  of  discussion,  after 
the  flaying  it  has  received  in  the  Chemical  News  about  a  decade  ago, 
I  fail  to  see.    One  English  language  is  enough  for  us. 
In  the  preface  p.  xl  it  says :  "  The  dropping  of  the  final  e  for  the 
alkaloids  and  the  halogens  was  not  approved  for  the  reason  that  its 
use  has  become  a  thoroughly  established  custom  in  this  country, 
and  it  was  not  deemed  wise  or  safe  to  sacrifice  this  distinctive  method 
of  designating  powerful  substances  used  as  medicine."  With  this 
excellent  premise,  we  ask,  was  it  wise  or  safe  to  even  change  the 
"  unchangeable  "  Latin  titles.  The  "  use  has  become  thoroughly 
established  "  to  call  arsenous  acid  acidum  arsenosum  ;  indeed,  it 
varies  little  from  this  in  other  pharmacopoeias,  -icosum  and  -iosum, 
in  French  it  is  given  in  the  vernacular.    This  poison  will  probably 
