On the new pharmacopoeia : with some preliminary considerations on the past and future condition of British pharmacy / T. Laycock.

  • Laycock, Thomas, 1812-1876.
Date:
[1858]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the new pharmacopoeia : with some preliminary considerations on the past and future condition of British pharmacy / T. Laycock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    • f TF/om (he PHAnMACEUTicAL Journal /</?• Decembutf!, TSTj^rT • ■ - 'YAL c':LLC 5 ON THE NEW PHARMACOFGBIA ;J WITH SOME PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS ON THE PAST AND FUTURE CONDITION OF BRITISH PHARMACY. An Introdudory Address^ delivered at the first Scientific Meeting {Session 1858-59) of the North British Branch of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. BY T. ]^YCOCK, M.D., &C., &C., Professor of the Practice of Medicine and of Clinical Medicine, University of Edinburgh. Independently of the commercial and merely professional interest which neces- sarily attaches to a new Pharmacopoeia, the forthcoming oflBcial text-book of British Pharmacy is associated with considerations of unusual importance. It will be brought out under the authority of the first British Medical Council. Hitherto our Pharmcopoeias have been English, Scotch, Irish: this will be national. Nay, since our great and growing colonies look to this country as the source of their science, litera- ture, and laws, so their practitioners and chemists will look to our national Pharma- copcEia as a safe guide in their vocations. Nor ought we to forget that our great empire in India is only the more closely bound to us by recent events, and that there, too, British medicine has triumphs to win. Hence the new Pharmacopoeia will be, in fact, not so much national as imperial. But I might further add that, as natives of the British colonies and of India come in greater numbers every year to the medical schools of Great Britain, and especially to that of Edinburgh (for one third of my own class at the University is either English or colonial), it is of no little importance to them to have but one official text-book to study in the place of three, while it is of still greater importance that it should be not only as near per- fection as it can be made, but universally useful. So that when these gentlemen de- part from our schools to exercise their art in their respective spheres of labour, or when our native-born students march with our armies, or migrate with their fellow-countrymen to the remotest bounds of the empire, they may all still bear with them, in its amplest meaning, the classic designation which the Apothecaries’ Society of London have taken as their motto from Ovid— “ Opiferque per orhem dicor.’’’’ Knowing the deep interest the Pharmaceutical Society must take in the forthcoming Pharmacopoeia, and moved by such considerations regarding it as I have stated, I thought it would be a fitting subject for an introductory address. But before 1 refer to it more especially, I would premise a few remarks on the past and present position of Pharmacy and its relations to the medical profession in this country. I think it must be acknowledged that the art is a sort of human instinct. If it were not so, it would be hardly the pleasing pursuit some persons find it to be. I was honoured the other day, by being asked my opinion as to the value of a receipt for a hair- wash, which one lady of my acquaintance had sent to another, and I specially noted that the fair Pharmaceutical Chemist said, ‘-I send you this receipt because I imagine you are as fond of messing and experimenting as I am.” The “ still-room maid ” of large domestic establishments in this country derives her official title from the fact that she was the assistant of the lady of the house in her multifarious phar- maceutical duties at a time when the noblest woman in the land had her stores of “simples,” “julaps,” “waters,” “robs,” confections, and the like—all sovereign remedies for fevers, coughs, gout, hysterics, &c. And doubtless, when tea and coffee was first introduced, it fell to her department to prepare the decoction and infusion of the new herbs—a business still connected with her duties—besides that of helping the housekeeper to pickle and preserve. In the early period of medicine, when prac- titioners were few, and Apothecaries only to be found in towns, the still-room was an important part of a nobleman’s house. I do not know if the ladies are as yet generally aware from what fmtid sources modern chemistry has extracted the