A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON POISONS. 
133 
searches which are from time to time required of him, either 
to satisfy himself of the purity of his chemicals, or to gratify 
the curiosity or wishes of the physician in reference to the 
nature or condition of certain secretions or excretions, in 
cases of interest. There is a practical tendency in the 
teaching of the book which points to enabling the student 
to help himself, as far as possible, by fabricating his own 
glass tube apparatus, and verifying the purity of his own 
tests, arriving at the end by the shortest means; in fact, 
simplifying wherever it is practicable. Qualitative and 
quantitative analysis are illustrated in special examples ex- 
hibiting the mode of procedure from step to step. A num- 
ber of valuable tables are appended, which add to the use- 
fulness of the work as a hand book of analysis, and as a 
whole, it is worthy of a place in the pharmaceutist's library. 
ART. XXIX. — A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON POISONS ; their 
Symptoms, Antidotes, and mode of Treatment. By 0. H. Costill ; 
M. D. Grigg, Elliott & Co., 1848. pp. 160. 
As a branch of medical science, toxicology has by no 
means been neglected. The extended works of Christison 
and Taylor, in Great Britain, and of Beck, in the United 
States, are evidence of this. But these books, whilst they 
afford a full expose of the subject, calculated to throw light 
on difficult cases, and fraught with interest to the medical stu- 
dent, incipient or advanced, are not sufficiently condensed 
for hurried reference at the moment of an accident. In this 
view our author has undertaken to condense into the space 
of a small duodecimo, such prominent facts relative to the 
symptoms, antidotes and treatment of poisoning as will 
prove most useful to the practitioner in his every day rou- 
tine. The pharmaceutist is occasionally called upon in 
emergencies for advice, before a physician can be obtained, 
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