A supplement to the Pharmacopoeia : being a treatise on pharmacology in general, including not only the drugs and compounds which are used by practitioners of medicine, but also most of those which are used in the chemical arts, or which undergo chemical preparations. Together with a collection of the most useful medical formulae, an explanation of the contractions used by physicians and druggists, and also a very copious index, English and Latin, of the various names by which the articles have been known at different periods / by Samuel Frederick Gray.

Samuel Frederick Gray

Date:: 1828

Credit: A supplement to the Pharmacopoeia : being a treatise on pharmacology in general, including not only the drugs and compounds which are used by practitioners of medicine, but also most of those which are used in the chemical arts, or which undergo chemical preparations. Together with a collection of the most useful medical formulae, an explanation of the contractions used by physicians and druggists, and also a very copious index, English and Latin, of the various names by which the articles have been known at different periods / by Samuel Frederick Gray. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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number of apothecaries are disgusted at midwifery, and prac- tise it only out of necessity, this would not be attended with any detriment, since, if rendered incompatible, what one practitioner lost by giving up his midwifery, would be made up in the increase of his medical practice through that re- jected by him who made choice of midwifery : moreover, as operative midwifery is evidently a branch of surgery, the practice of it by the pure surgeons would enable them to live out of large cities, and thus extend the benefit of their help beyond its present limits. The design of a Pharmacopoeia, peculiar to London and its environs, seems to 'have arisen from Sir Theodore May- erne, the then President of the College, who being also founder of the Distillers7 Company, procured, in 1639, the publication of a similar work, The London Distiller, for that business, written indeed in English, but still more care- fully guarded from the profane eyes of the uninitiated, as not only the more common materials, and the quantities, were expressed by characters usually employed in other significa- tions, but the very compositions themselves were merely numbered, to which a secret reference was made by charac- ters from an alphabetical index; the key to all these charac- ters being only given, upon a loose paper, to the freemen: but as these loose papers have been pasted into the books, and the books sold by the representatives of deceased mem- bers, the secrets have thus been revealed. To this original Pharmacopoeia some additions were made in 1627 and 1635, and in 1650 an improved edition came forth, to which further additions were made in 1677. No alterations of much consequence, however, were made until ] 720, when a new edition was published under the auspices of Sir Hans Sloane. He being a botanist, the botanical names of the plants were added to the officinal names, which was a great improvement; but in some measure counterba- lanced by the roots, woods, barks, gums, rosins, and other parts or products of plants, being huddled together under the general title of vegetables, with only a note in the mar- gin of the parts or products in use. Several syrops, oint- ments, plaisters, and similar compositions which had gone out of use among the profession in London, were omitted, although it is probable that many practitioners still employed them, as we know that some are even now retained and sold in the shops; yet it is evident that the object of the college

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