Pantologia. A new (cabinet) cyclopædia, by J.M. Good, O. Gregory, and N. Bosworth assisted by other gentlemen of eminence

supposed merely to soften the part; and in such case are called emollients; while others, which are supposed to have a power of augmenting the disposition of the secernents of an inflamed part to the secretion of pus, are called maturants or suppuratives. Sedative medicines, that have the power of assuaging pain, are denominated paregorics; if they altogether remove or destroy pain, they are called anodynes: if they take off spasm, antispasmodics; if they produce quiet sleep, hypnotics; if a very deep and unnatural sleep, together with considerable stupefaction of the senses. narcotics. Tonic medicines, in like manner, obtain the name of corroboratives, analeptics, or nervines, when they slightly increase the contractile power of the solids; but of astringents or adstringents, if they do this in a great degree. Some of this order of medicines have been supposed to promote the growth of flesh, to consolidate wounds, and restrain hæmorrhages; and hence the names of sarcotics and tranmatics, or vulneraries; names, however, which may well be dispensed with, as the quality is very questionable, and perhaps altogether erroneously ascribed. Other astringents, again, are denominated repellent, discutient, stimulant, or attractive, according to the respective modes by which they are conceived to produce one common effect. Medicines of the inflammatory tribe are, in like manner, divided into vesicatories or blisters, if by their application they raise watery bladders on the skin; cathæretics, escharotics, or corrosives, if they eat into and destroy the substance of the solid parts themselves; and rubefactive or rubefacient, if possessed of less power than the vesicatories, they merely produce a redness on the part to which they are applied, by increasing the action of a part, and stimulating the red particles of the blood into vessels which do not naturally possess them. The alterant tribe is divided into absorbents, antiseptics, coagulants, resolvents, calefiants, and refri gerants, according to the peculiar mode by which the different individuals of this tribe are supposed to operate. The evacuants are generally subdivided from the nature of the humour they are supposed to discharge: emetics if they evacuate the contents of the stomach by vomiting; cathartics if they induce purging; laxatives if they produce a moderate discharge of feces without pain or sickness; eccoprotics if the discharge be greater, but still coufined to the common nature of the feces themselves. Thus again they are named diaphoretics, if they promote the expulsion of humours through the pores of the skin with a small increase of action; sudorifics if the increase of action be greater, and the discharge more copicus. Such as excite urine are called diuretics; such as produce evacuation from the glands of the palate, mouth, and salivary ducts, salivating medicines; those that promote the discharge of mucus from the throat apophlegmatics; those that evacuate by the nose, ptarmics, errhines, sternutatories; and those which promote the menstrual discharge, emmenagogues. To this order, also, some writers reduce those medicines which expel any preternatural bodies, as worms, stones, and flatus or confined air of these the first are called anthelmintics; the second, and especially when directed to the bladder, lithontriptics; and the third carminatives.

Such is the general outline of those who have adopted this kind of system. But it must be obvious, that though the general outline be the same, it may submit to a great variety of modifications; and hence, again, the writers who have made choice of this system, and founded their classificaVous upon the effects produced by the articles of

It will appear, even upon a superficial examina tion of the first of these classifications, that the first is unnecessarily diffuse: that some of the divisions might be introduced under one cominou head, as for example those of emollients and demulients; diluents and attenuants; and that for one or two of them there is little foundation in nature.

We particularly allude, in this last instance, to the antalkalines, which are obviously only introduced as a sort of graceful contrast to the antacids; and concerning which the writer himself observes," had it not been to give some appearance of system, and from my complaisance to Dr. Boerhaave, who treats de morbis cx alkali spontaneo, I should not have admitted of this chapter; for I am well persuaded that no alkaline salt, in its separate state, ever exists in the bloodvessels of the living human body." This is not the only instance, however, in which we find men of judgment and deserved reputation consenting to propagate errors, from the mere love of system, or from attachment to names of extensive celebrity. Happy would it be for us that all who thus act should avow their error like the author before us, and thus put the remedy by the side of the evil.

The classification of Dr. Darwin, however, la bours under still stronger objections. Instead of being too diffuse, it is too contracted, for we may defy the warmest supporter of the Darwinian school to simplify and arrange the whole of what is included in the preceding classification, or that ought to be so included, under the present. But it has a fault still more prominent; and that is, it is adapted to an individual nosology, we mean the nosology of the author himself; and this a nosology which, in some of its divisions, is perhaps founded on mere fancy, and consequently has no chance of a permanent or general adoption. His invertentia and revertentia depend upon actions which, to say the least of them, are highly doubtful, and have for some years been gradually sinking into disbelief.

Between these two extremes, we have had a variety of arrangements of late years, one of the best of which, perhaps, is Dr. Kirby's, published in a

small tract, entitled, Tables of the Materia Medica, which, with a chemical and a miscellaneous division, consists of eighteen classes; but to both which we cannot but object; to the first, as it enters too deeply into the department of pharmacy for a mere list of the materials of medicine; and to the second, as evincing a carelessness or want of methodizing talent, which we should not have expected, and a total departure from every system whatever. We shall nevertheless avail ourselves of its general merit as far as we may be able, and endeavour to correct its deficiencies.

There is, however, another point to which we must advert before we proceed to our classification; and that is the nomenclature by which the different substances ought to be distinguished. Till of late, from the use of different nomenclatures by different colleges of medicine, and an absurd intermixture of several of them by some writers, the whole has been a scene of perplexity and confusion. Within the last six or seven years, however, a disposition has been progressively evinced to simplify and generalise the technology, and render the descriptions more accurate. The language of Linnéus has been resorted to as by common consent throughout the three kingdoms of animals, vegetables, and minerals; and though the chemical vocabulary of Lavoisier has not yet been generally introduced, it is daily gaining ground in the publications of individual writers, and has been admitted in its utmost latitude into one or two of our collegiate pharmacopoeias. The College of Edinburgh, as it has long led the way as a medical school, has also taken the lead in this instance, and has the honour of having first composed a pharmacopoeia in the pure and unmixed language of science, by its last edition, published in November 1804. The Dublin College has followed its example; and at length the College of London, stimulated by such noble incentives, has also roused itself, and re-edited its pharmacopoeia, with a variety of modern improvements. The general nomenclature of this will not be found to vary essentially from the nomenclature of the Fdinburgh pharmacopoeia, and especially in that part of it which relates to the materia medica, the immediate object before us, excepting that the terms are for the most part materially abbreviated.

We freely confess our surprise that, from the errors resulting from a promiscuous use of weights and measures, nothing very decisive has been attempted by any of the pharmacopoeias. It would have added largely to the reputation of the edition of the London College, if it had adopted the decimal and applicable menstruation of the French Institute, at the same time that it consented to admit the French nomenclature. It has not, however, been altogether inactive upon this subject, for it has exchanged the words ounces and drams, in the measurement of liquids, for fluidounces and fluidrams, fluiduncia and fluidrachma; and has altogether banished the word drop (gutta) as an indeterminate quantity, and has coined the term mixim (minimum) as a substitute; meaning by minim or minimum the sixtieth part by measure of a fluidounce, in the same manner as a grain is the sixtieth part of an ounce solid and glass measures are now manufactured, and may be had at any of the glass shops, properly graduated, for the purpose of ascertaining this minute proportion.

To this change we assent most heartily: the necessity is clear, and the term is elegant. Fluidrams and fluidounces, however, make a queer kind of compound; and if any thing of the sort were

attempted, they should have been liquidrams and liquidounces, since the term liquid is now, by a kind of general consent among chemists, confined to express permanent fluids specifically (such as are uniformly intended in the pharmacopoeia) while that of fluid is applied generically to denote gasseous, as well as permanent fluids.

Independently of these changes, we have to remark that the liquid libra, or pint, is now exchanged for the term octarius; and this also may have its advantage in occasionally preventing confusion, where the peculiar kind of libra is not sufficiently pointed out.

In glancing over the regulations of the Edinburgh College upon this subject, we perceive it has carried the point of simplicity to a still greater, perhaps to an inconvenient, and even culpable extent; for, apparently in utter despair of obtaining any thing like certain in measuring medicines, it has made a general proscription of this kind of graduation in every instance: so that in the Edinburgh forms the liquids of every sort are sup posed to be employed by weight alone.

In the ensuing classification, we have been anxious to give our readers a general and concentrated view, as far as we have been able, not only of the substances employed, but of the form and preparation in which they are exhibited in the new editions of the three national pharmacopoeias of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin. We may be told, perhaps, that we are hereby, in some measure, intrenching upon the province of pharmacy, properly so called. We are not insensible to the remark: but we hereby gain an advantage which no other plan could present to us; we offer at one and the same time a table of comparative statements, and shew the various forms in which the same material becomes an officinal drug. We have also been anxious to exhibit, in every instance, a glance at the common dose for adult age, as well as to specify, in terms as abbreviated as possible, the name of the country in which the different articles exist indigenously; the part or organ of the substance employed; and the disease in which it is supposed to be efficacious. The classification is as follows; and every class is subdivided, as far as possible, into an animal, a vegetable, and a fossile section.