CONDITION OF APOTHECARIES IN AFRICA. 125 
the nitric acid. In this manner a solution is obtained con- v 
taining the whole of the nitric acid which existed in the 
pyroxyline, and the amount of which may be readily esti- 
mated. — Chern. Gaz., from Comptes Rendus. 
ART. XLJ. — ON THE CONDITION OF THE APOTHECARIES IN 
THE INTERIOR OF AFRICA, according to the Verbal Information 
communicated by an Empirical Physician from Kartum. By X. 
Landerer, of Athens. 
The condition of the Apothecaries in the interior parts of 
Africa, is truly miserable. In these persons, ignorance, 
cunning, andavarice are conjoined with charlatanry. They 
are called Speziarides, and their shops Speziaria. They 
are generally Jews, Armenians, and Turks, who have for 
some time, in Constantinople, assisted in a Chemist's shop, 
or lived with a Hekim (Physician.) or practised as Serahs 
(Surgeons) in an hospital. No particular permission by the 
authorities is required for opening a Speziaria ; the whole 
license consisting in the possession of 2000 or 3000 piasters. 
The shop consists of a more or less spacious wooden movea- 
ble booth, in which medicines are exposed to view on 
wooden shelves in glass vessels, boxes, and sacks- Im- 
mensely large white glass bottles with glass covers, on 
which usually are fixed oil-lamps, in which the oil swims 
on two or three kinds of differently coloured liquids, contain 
the best samples of indigenous and exotic products, such as 
senna, gums, tamarinds, cassia, sarsaparilla, corrosive sub- 
limate, sulphate of copper, corallia, margaritae, spongiae, 
lapides spongiarum, &c, &c. In the middle of the shop 
