192  Pharmacy  Hundred  Years  Ago.       j  AimI° Si™' 
cist  and  could  prepare  pharmaceuticals  of  an  elegance  almost 
equalling  that  of  the  French  preparations.  In  a  curiously  frag- 
mentary contribution  from  S.  F.  Troth,  he  brings  out  that  the  first 
really  nice  Epsom  Salt  was  brought  from  England  to  Philadelphia 
in  1 82 1 ;  that  the  first  sodium  bicarbonate  purchased  by  Henry 
Troth,  in  1821,  cost  $1.25  a  pound;  that  tartaric  acid  was  a  novelty 
in  1821,  and  cost  $1.25  a  pound;  and  that  about  that  time  druggists 
had  their  English  magnesium  carbonate  calcined  to  the  oxide  in  the 
furnaces  at  Adam  Miller's  pottery  on  Zane  Street.  From  an 
advertisement  of  a  Cincinnati  druggist  we  learn  that  in  1819, 
beeswax  cost  20  cents  a  pound ;  cassia,  70  cents ;  ginger,  30  cents ; 
and  sugar,  28  cents.  Another  Cincinnati  advertisement  of  1819 
announces  the  receipt  from  Philadelphia  of  a  consignment  of  Mil- 
nor's  Acid  Lemon  for  making  lemonade,  and  of  Farr's  Soda 
Powder  for  making  soda  water.  In  passing  it  might  be  stated 
that  the  first  American  quinine  was  made  in  1823  by  Farr  and 
Kunzi,  the  firm  that  eventually  developed  into  the  Powers  and 
Weightman  factory. 
Pharmaceutical  Thought  in  182 1. 
To  discuss  the  general  trend  of  science  in  1821  would  exceed 
the  limits  of  this  paper,  so  there  is  no  need  of  going  further  in  this 
direction  than  to  cite  what  Edward  Parrish  said  fifty  years  ago 
today,  to  that  effect  that  in  1821  the  labors  of  Davy,  Ampere,  Dal  ton, 
Berzelius,  Faraday,  Oerstedt  and  Arago  had  reached  their  culmina- 
tion, thus  laying  the  foundations  of  modern  chemistry. 
William  Procter  pointed  out  the  difficulty  in  making  a  history 
of  pharmacy  of  the  182 1  period,  since  the  only  pharmaceutical 
journals  then  reaching  this  country  were  French.  It  has  been  the 
privilege  of  the  writer  of  this  paper  to  scan  the  Journal  de  Phar- 
macie  for  1821,  and  also  two  German  year  books  ot  pharmacy  of 
the  same  period,  Kastner's  Berlinische  Jahrbuch  and  the  Scheide- 
kunstler  und  Apotheker  Almanack.  From  these  sources  consider- 
able interesting  information  has  been  obtained;  among  it  the  fact 
that  in  France,  the  available  journals  of  science,  besides  the 
Journal  de  Pharmacie,  numbered  seventy.  Of  these  only  one  was 
pharmaceutical  (TrommsdorfFs  Journal  der  Chemie  and  Phar- 
mazie)  and  only  one  came  from  America  (Journal  of  the  Philadel- 
phia Academy  of  Sciences).  In  the  two  German  Year  Books  are 
lists  of  books  and  periodicals  received  by  the  editors  during  the 
