Chemistry : general, medical, and pharmaceutical, including the chemistry of the U.S. pharmacopœia, a manual on the general principles of the science, and their applications in medicine and pharmacy / by John Attfield.

  • John Attfield
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Chemistry : general, medical, and pharmaceutical, including the chemistry of the U.S. pharmacopœia, a manual on the general principles of the science, and their applications in medicine and pharmacy / by John Attfield. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Chemical nomenclature has been modernized to the extent of defining the alkali-metal salts and the earthy compounds as those of potassium, sodium, ammonium, barium, calcium, magnesium, and aluminium, instead of potash, soda, ammonia, baryta, lime, magnesia, and alumina. The author confidently believes that this change, founded on views now adopted by all prominent writers on Chemistry, and used in the Pharmaco- poeia of the United States, will be accepted and become popular in medicine and pharmacy. It is a step in the direction of sim- plicity and consistency, and involves far less hypothesis than is contained in the old system. The name nitrate of potash, for example, was based on the pure assumption that nitre contained oxide of potassium or potash and nitric anhydride, then errone- ously termed nitric acid. By the modern name, nitrate of potassium, all that is intended to be conveyed is that nitre contains the element common to all potassium compounds and the group of elements common to all nitrates. Under the old method students always experienced difficulty in distinguishing salts of the metal from salts of its oxide—salts of potassium, for instance, from salts of potash; under the new view no such difficulty arises. Names such as potassium nitrate or potassic nitrate are also consistent with modern views, but for general adoption are too unlike the original. The contractions in Latin for names like nitrate of potassium are identical with the contractions for names resembling nitrate of potash; an accidental circumstance that will much facilitate the general introduction of the former among medical practitioners and pharmacists, and a practical advantage that must determine the choice over the other chemically equivalent names just mentioned. The author ventures to express some gratification that his use and advocacy of this system since the first edition of this manual was published in 18G7 has resulted in its adop- tion, in 1873, in the Pharmacopoeia of the United States, and in the recommendation, from all medical, chemical, and pharmaceutical authorities in Great Britain, of its adoption in the next Briti.sh Pharmacopoeia. Pharmacy in these two countries will thus sooner or later, in the important matter of
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