This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1851 Excerpt: ... 396 PART IV. MATERIA MEDICA AND PUARMACOPCEIA. INTRODUCTION. The following portion of the work consists of a Materia Mgdica, that is, a description of the various articles or drugs employed in medicine, especially such as are used in veterinary practice; and a Pharmacopoeia, or directions for compounding or mixing them, with occasional observations on the diseases for which they are usually prescribed. In some former editions the Pharmacopeia and Materia Medica formed two distinct parts; in the present they are incorporated; that is, the medicinal article or drug, the class to which it belongs, and the formula or receipts, are arranged in the same alphabet. This plan appeared to the author more convenient than that originally adopted. Some readers will perhaps object to the number and variety of the formulae, as well as to the number of ingredients which some of them contain; but, however desirable simplicity may be in medicinal composition, there is, perhaps, a limit which it would be dangerous to pass. On this subject, Dr. Paris, in his Pharmacologia, makes the following remark: "I have already observed that all extravagant systems tend, in the course of time, to introduce practices of an opposite kind: this truth finds a powerful illustration in the history of medicinal combination; and it becomes a serious question, whether the disgust so justly excited by the polypharmacy of our predecessors may not have induced the physician of the present day to carry his ideas of simplicity too far, so as to neglect and lose the advantages, which in many cases, beyond all doubt, may be obtained by scientific combination." "I think," says Dr. Powel, "it may be asserted, without fear of contradiction, that no medicine compounded of five or six simple articles has hith...