1 70    Selections  from  Banish  Archives  for  Pharmacy.  {"^""xS  isys"'"' 
respectable  number  of  writers  who  employ  this  third  orthography : 
Glauber  salts,  which  resembles  the  German  form  Glauber  sal%.  I 
am  fullv  aware  that  perhaps  quite  as  many  names  may  be  quoted  in 
favor  of  Glauber's  salt,  but  I  contend  that  that  will  not  suffice  to  es- 
tablish the  incorrectness  of  Glauber's  salts. 
It  has  occurred  to  me  that  possibly  the  term  salts  was  never  intended 
as  a  plural  at  all,  but  that  it  was  used  to  distinguish  medicinal  salts  from 
culinary  W/,  as  the  terminal  s  in  reality  exists  in  the  Greek  o?>^c,  from 
which  lexicographers  seem  to  agree  in  deriving  salt.  It  is  likewise  used 
to  this  day  in  the  Romaic  word  Sjmc.  It  seems  quite  probable  that 
the  word  salts,  as  a  singular,  was  taken  immediately  from  the  German, 
as  ts  is  phonetically  precisely  equivalent  to  the  German  z  of  sal%. 
In  conclusion  it  may  be  well  to  call  attention  to  the  fact,  that  living 
languages  are  constantly  changing,  and  that  all  arbitrary  grammatical 
rules  must  make  provisions  for  exceptions.  We  are  forced  to  abide  by 
that  which  custom  establishes,  and  may  therefore  tolerate  salts  in  the 
same  way  as  parallel  expressions,  such  as  means,  riches,  alms,  news, 
waters  of  the  sea,  &c.  It  is  recognized  as  a  principle  in  all  languages 
that  they  are  moulded  according  to  the  usages  of  the  best  writers  and 
speakers.  The  dictum  of  Horace  is  quite  as  true  at  the  present  day 
as  it  was  in  his  : 
"  usus, 
Quern  penes  arbitrium  est  et  jus  et  norma  loquendi." 
Adolph  W.  Miller. 
SELECTIONS  FROM  THE  DANISH  ARCHIVES  FOR  PHARMACY.* 
BY  HANS  M.  WILDER. 
Preservation  of  Medicinal  Preparations  by  Filtered  Air. 
Prof.  Almen  (Upsala,  Sweden)  has  instituted  a  series  of  experiments, 
which  confirm  the  observations  of  Dusch  and  Schroeder  {see  "Amer. 
Jour.  Pharm.,"  1854,  vol.  xxiv,  p.  376)  and  those  of  Folberth  (ibid..^ 
1862,  vol.  xxxiv,  p.  336),  respecting  the  possibility  of  keeping  infu- 
sions, decoctions  and  similar  (under  ordinary  circumstances  easily 
spoiled)  preparations  for  years. 
This  is  done  by  combining  the  method  of  Appert  with  the  use  of  a 
cotton  plug.    The  preparation  to  be  preserved  is  heated  to  the  boiling 
*  "  Archiv  for  Pharmaci  og  technisk  Chemi  med  deres  Grundvidenskaber.  Redi- 
geret  af  S.  M.  Trier,  Assessor  pharmaciae."    Kjobenhavn:  1875. 
