Pharmacologia : or the history of medicinal substances, with a view to establish the art of prescribing and of composing extemporaneous formulae upon fixed and scientific principles; illustrated by formulae, in which the intention of each element is designated by key letters / by John Ayrton Paris.

Date:
1820
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pharmacologia : or the history of medicinal substances, with a view to establish the art of prescribing and of composing extemporaneous formulae upon fixed and scientific principles; illustrated by formulae, in which the intention of each element is designated by key letters / by John Ayrton Paris. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    9/524
    PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. THE Public are already in possession of many pharmaceutical compendiums and epitomes of plau- sible pretensions, composed with the view of directing the practice of the junior, and of relieving the occa- sional embarrassments of the more experienced prac- titioner. Nothing is farther from my intention than to disparage their several merits, or to question their claims to professional utility; but, in truth and justice it must be confessed that, as far as these works relate to the art of composing scientific prescriptions, their authors have not escaped the too common error of supposing, that the reader is already grounded in the first principles of the science ; or, to borrow the figurative illustration of a popular writer, that while they are in the ship of science, they forget the disciple cannot arrive without a boat. I am not acquainted with any book that is calculated to furnish such assist- ance, or which professes to teach the Grammar, and ground work of this important branch of medical knowledge. Numerous are the works which present us with the detail, but no one with the philosophy of the subject. We have copious catalogues of formal recipes, and many of unexceptionable propriety, but the compilers do not discuss the principles upon which they were constructed, nor do they explain the part which each ingredient is supposed to perform in the general scheme of the formula; they cannot therefore lead to any useful generalization, and the young practitioner, without a beacon that can direct his