PHARMACOPCEIA OF THE UNITED STATES. 125 
sent edition is the introduction, in connection with certain ar- ^OFF^ 
tides of the Materia Medica and certain preparations, of brief 
notes indicating the readiest means of ascertaining their genu- 
ineness and purity. In this improvement the example of the 
London and Edinburgh Colleges, in the late edition of their 
respective Pharmacopoeias, have been followed, and use has 
been made of the rules given by these Colleges, so far as they 
are deemed applicable." 
The most decided characteristic of the new Pharmacopoeia, 
and that which strikes one accustomed to the previous edition, 
is the complete English garb in which it is put forth ; this 
may not please those who are sticklers for an universal lan- 
guage of science, and whose ideas of medicines and medicinal 
preparations are clothed in antiquated Latin, with its forced 
and sometimes ludicrous correspondence in tenses ; but the 
argument of the committee is all sufficient to convince an 
unbiased and unprejudiced mind of the correctness of the 
step they have taken, and in fact it is so pithily expressed, as 
to be unanswerable ; it is as follows : " There seems to be no 
sufficient practical advantage to counterbalance the incon- 
venience of attempting to present ideas in a language which 
has no appropriate words to express them, and the labor 
and expense incurred in printing twice as much matter as 
is necessary to convey the meaning intended" With so 
forcible a presentation of the case, it is hardly necessary to 
extenuate the omission by pleading the precedents afforded by 
the French Codex and Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia. 
The last point of novelty we have to notice, is the mode of 
preparation, to which has been given the title of "method of 
displacement this has now come into such general use, and 
is so highly thought of by the most skilful and best qualified 
pharmaceutists, as to have been almost entirely substituted by 
them for the former method of maceration and filtering. It 
requires considerable practical tact, however, and considerable 
practice to adapt it to the cases where it can be employed, 
