EDITORIAL. 
191 
will  increase  their  business,  and  leave  their  uneducated  brethren  to  the 
neglect  they  merit. 
There  is  another  plan  which  might  be  adopted  by  the  public  for  its 
safety  and  satisfaction,  but  to  it  we  cannot  allude  in  this  article." — 
American  Medical  Monthly  from  The  New  York  Daily  Times. 
Peirce  piercecZ,  or  Politics  vs.  Science. — From  a  cotemporary  we 
learn  that  Dr.  Peirce,  Examiner  of  Drugs  at  the  port  of  Boston — and  author 
of  a  work  on  the  adulteration  of  drugs,  etc.,  having,  in  the  opinion  of  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  had  sufficient  opportunity  to  learn  the  business 
of  inspecting  drugs  has  been  graciously  permitted  to  discontinue  his  ser- 
vice to  the  government,  that  Dr.  Joseph  H.  Smith,  of  Dover,  New  Hamp- 
shire, may  have  a  chance  to  acquire  some  knowledge  of  the  art  and  mystery 
of  drug-judging,  before  his  friend,  the  President,  ceases  to  be  controller 
general.  The  Honorable  Secretary  is  evidently  afraid  that  his  agents  will 
become  too  acute  at  detecting  adulterations,  and  injure  the  revenue  by  too 
strict  an  interpretation  of  the  law,  to  avoid  which,  he  brings  into  office 
physicians  from  the  interior,  where  the  opportunity  for  making  acquaint- 
ance with  pharmacology  and  chemistry  is  necessarily  limited. 
When  the  inspectorships  of  flour,  whiskey,  bark,  etc.,  are  filled  with 
persons  ludicrously  unfitted  for  their  duties,  we  can  smile  and  pass  on  ;  but 
when  the  purity  of  the  drug  market  is  to  be  periled,  that  political  partizans 
may  be  rewarded,  it  would  be  criminal  to  remain  quiet. 
Outlines  of  Chemical  Analysis,  prepared  for  the  Chemical  Laboratory  of 
Giessen,  By  Dr.  Heinrich  Will,  Professor  of  Experimental  Chemistry 
in  the  University  of  Giessen.  Translated  from  the  third  German  Edition, 
by  Daniel  Breed,  M.D.,  of  the  U.  S.  Patent  Office,  and  Lewis  H.  Steiner, 
M.A.,  M.D.,  Prof,  of  Chem.  Nat.  Med.  College.  Boston  and  Cambridge, 
James  Monroe  &  Co.,  1855,  pp.  297,  octavo. 
The  shortest  way  to  a  result  that  is  reliable  and  accurate,  and  which  does 
not  infer  too  much  pre-existent  knowledge  on  the  part  of  those  for  whose 
guidance  it  is  offered,  is  certainly  the  one  to  be  chosen  for  the  student.  A 
redundancy  of  directions  and  a  multiplication  of  reagents  beyond  a  clear 
indication  of  the  identity  of  the  objects  sought,  however  important  to  the 
toxicological  chemist  in  giving  strength  and  force  to  an  analysis  in  medico- 
legal evidence,  should  always  be  avoided  in  presenting  practical  chemistry 
to  the  student,  as  tending  to  confuse  him.  In  this  regard  the  teaching  of 
the  Gwssen  school,  under  the  direction  of  Liebig,  was  conducted,  and  its 
success  will  not  be  questioned  in  view  of  the  many  eminent  men  who  have 
derived  their  first  practical  lessons  from  its  laboratory.  The  work,  of  which 
the  title  page  is  given  above,  was  prepared  at  the  suggestion  of  Liebig,  by 
Dr.  Will,  who.  from  being  his  able  assistant,  has  become  his  successor,  since 
Leibig's  translation  to  the  Bavarian  Capital,  and  it  has  received  his  unquali- 
fied approval.  Although  the  first  German  edition  of  this  work  has  already 
been  rendered  into  English  by  Prof.  Hoffman,  of  London,  and  an  American 
edition  of  this  issued  under  the  auspices  of  Prof.  Horsford,  of  Cambridge, 
