Remarks, on the reform of the pharmaceutical nomenclature : and particularly on that adopted by the Edinburgh College, read before the Liverpool Medical Society / by John Bostock.

Date:
1807
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks, on the reform of the pharmaceutical nomenclature : and particularly on that adopted by the Edinburgh College, read before the Liverpool Medical Society / by John Bostock. 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.

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    n O the Edinburgh College have executed the proposed alteration. The chief circumstances which ren- dered it necessary to reform the nomen- clature of chemistry have been already referred to. Many of the terms in com- mon use were framed in consequence of an hypothesis, and this hypothesis being proved to be false, it was desirable to remove it entirely out of sight, lest the mind should be unavoidably led to recur to it, and thus be retarded in the acquisition of knowledge. When, for ex- ample, the existence of phlogiston had been disproved, it was obviously absurd to talk of phlogisticated and dephlogisti- cated air, or to continue the denomination of vitriolic acid to a substance, into the composition of which we are assured, that there does not enter a single particle of vitriol. The adoption of the new nomenclature of chemistry was peculiarly important, because the main object in this science is to discover the composition b 2