PHARMACOPŒIA
PHARMACOPŒ’IA. This term has been applied to various works, consisting for the most part of (1) a list of the articles of the Materia Medica, whether simple or compound, with their characters, and the tests for the determination of their purity; and (2) a collection of approved receipts or prescriptions, together with the processes for articles in the Materia Medica, obtained by chemical operations. Almost every civilized country of importance has its national pharmacopœia, amongst which those of the United States, France, and Prussia deserve specially honorable notice. The first pharmacopœia published under authority appears to have been that of Nuremberg in the year 1542. A student named Valerius Cordus, who was staying for a short time at Nuremberg, showed a collection of medical receipts, which lie had selected from the works of the most eminent writers, to the physicians of that city, who were so struck with its value that they urged him to print it for the benefit of the apothecaries, and obtained for his work the sanction of the senatus. Before this time, the books chiefly in use amongst apothecaries were the treatises: On Simples by Avicenna and Serapion; the Liber Servitoris of Balchasim ben Aberazerim; the Antidotarium of Johannes Damascenus or Mezue, arranged in classes; and the Antidotarium of Nicolaus de Salerno, which was arranged alphabetically. This work was commonly called Nicolaus Magnus, to distinguish it from an abridgment known as Nicolaus Parvus.
Confining our remarks to the British Pharmacopœias, we may notice that the first edition of the London Pharmacopœia (or, more correctly speaking, of the Pharmacopœia of the London College of Physicians) appeared in 1618, and was chiefly founded on the works of Mezue and Nicolaus de Salerno. Successive editions appeared in 1627, 1635, 1650, 1697, 1721, 1746, 1787, 1809, 1824, 1836, and 1851; and form an important contribution to the history of the progress of pharmacy and therapeutics during the last two centuries and a half. The nature and the number of the ingredients that entered into the composition of many of the pharmaceutical preparations of the 17th and 18th centuries, would equally astonish most of the practitioners and patients of the present day. In the earlier editions we find enumerated earth-worms, snails, wood-lice, frogs, toads, puppy clogs, foxes (’ a fat fox of middle age, if you can get such a one ‘), the skull of a man who had been hanged, the blood of the cat, the urine and excrements of various animals, &c.; and electuaries were ordered, containing 50, 62, and in one instance—Mathiolus, his Great Antidote against Poison and Pestilence—124 different ingredients.
The Edinburgh Pharmacopœia is more modern than the London, the first edition having appeared in 1699; while the Dublin Pharmacopœia does not date further back than 1807. The latest edition of these works appeared in the years 1841 and 1850 respectively.
Until the Medical Act passed in 1858, the right of publishing the pharmacopœias for England, Scotland, and Ireland was vested in the Colleges of Physicians of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin respectively; and as these three pharmacopœias contained many important preparations, similar in name but totally different in strength (as, for example, dilute hydrocyanic acid, solution of hydrochlorate of morphia, &c.), dangerous complications arose from a London prescription being made up in Edinburgh or Dublin, or vice versa. By that act it is ordained that ‘the General [Medical] Council shall cause to be published, under their direction, a book containing a list of medicines and compounds, and the manner of preparing them, together with the true weights and measures by which they are to be prepared and mixed; and containing such other matter and things relating thereto as the General Council shall think fit, to be called British Pharmacopœia, which shall for all purposes be deemed to be substituted throughout Great Britain and Ireland, for the several above-mentioned pharmacopœias.’ The British Pharmacopœia, published in 1864, had the merit of amalgamating the London, Edinburgh, and Dublin pharmacopœias; but it unfortunately contained so many defects, that, in accordance with the universal wishes both of the medical profession and of the chemists, the Medical Council ordered a new edition to be as speedily as possible prepared. This new edition has met with general favor from the profession; and it is to be hoped that as we have now succeeded in incorporating three distinct works into one, we may hope by and by to have a universal Pharmacopœia, or, at all events, one of so general a nature that the most important medicines of the American. British, and chief continental pharmacopœias shall all be of the same strength.