Remarks on the nomenclature of the new London Pharmacopœia : read before the Liverpool Medical Society / by John Bostock.

  • John Bostock
Date:
1810
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the nomenclature of the new London Pharmacopœia : read before the Liverpool Medical Society / by John Bostock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    18/43
    of botany, the generic term is equally applicable to a number of individual species, which, although they may agree in many respects, at the same time possess various essential differences; and, by employing the generic term only, we are totally unable to determine what individual species is referred to. In the present instance the genus acacia, as constituted by Wildenow, contains no less than 102 species, to each of which the generic term equally applies; so that, wfere we not pre- viously informed, by some other means, what u'as the article referred to, there is nothing in the name which could enable us to ascertain which of these 102 plants was the one in question. The nomenclature in this case is even more arbitrary than in the former, and indeed, may be considered, not merely as imperfect, but as absolutely incor- rect; because it is saying, that the name, which in botanical language belongs to more than a hundred plants, shall, in pharmaceutical language, be restricted to one; thus making them contradic- tory, and, to a certain extent, incompatible with each other.(j) Vinegar still retains its old name, (j) To the following sixty-nine articles of the materia medica, i. e. nearly one-third of the whole, the generic name only is assigned: Acaciae gummi Althaea: folia et radix Aconiti folia Anethi semina Allii radix Anthemidis flores %
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