The dispensatory of the United States of America / By George B. Wood ... and Franklin Bache.

  • George Bacon Wood
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The dispensatory of the United States of America / By George B. Wood ... and Franklin Bache. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/1394 (page 11)
    * - PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION. In the several editions of this Dispensatory subsequent to the first, such modifications of the original plan as set forth in the foregoing preface, and such additions and emendations have been made, as were thought calculated . to increase the usefulness of the work, and to maintain it on a level with the advancing knowledge of the times. In the second edition, an Appendix was introduced containing notices and descriptions of numerous drugs, which, though not in general use, were possessed of some interest from their former or existing relations to Medicine and Pharmacy. In the third edition, the authors adopted the present plan of treating, in the body of the work, of those medicines and preparations exclusively which are recognised in the American and British Pharmacopeias, while all others deemed worthy of notice were placed in the Appendix; thus giving a precision to the arrangement which was before wanting. In the preparation of the fourth edition, many changes were rendered necessary by the previous publica- tion of the revised London Pharmacopeia of 1836. On no revision of the Dispensatory did the authors bestow so much labour as on the one preparatory to the fifth edition. The new editions of the United States. and Edinburgh Pharmacopeias required comment; and the recent phar- macological treatises of Dr. Pereira and Dr. Christison, containing much original observation, and the Medical Flora of Dr. Lindley, not to speak of other valuable works in different departments of Materia Medica and Pharmacy, afforded a great mass of new material for selection and arrange- ment. The periodical press had also presented much that demanded notice; and the changes in the commerce in drugs, and the various modi- fications in pharmaceutical operations, resulting from increased experience and the advancement of science, called for careful personal examination and inquiry. It was the aim of the authors, by pruning redundances and concentrating the new matter within the smallest possible space, to swell the Dispensatory as little as consisted with the great object of utility; but, with all their endeavours, they were compelled to exceed the former limits by more than one hundred pages. The short period of time which has elapsed since the publication of the fifth edition, has left them compara- tively little to add in the present. They have, however, endeavoured to select and condense from the periodical journals every thing of value which came within the scope of the work; and, in offering it for the sixth time to the public, they feel themselves justified in expressing the hope that it will be found, not less than formerly, to meet the wishes of the medical and pharmaceutical community. Philadelphia, May, 1845.