The new dispensatory : containing, I. The elements of pharmacy. II. The materia medica, or an account of the substances employed in medicine; with the virtues and uses of each article, so far as they are warranted by experience and observation. III. The preparations and compositions of the new London and Edinburgh pharmacopoeas; with some of the most celebrated foreign medicines; the most useful of those directed in the hospitals; sundry elegant extemporaneous forms, &c. digested in such a method as to compose a regular system of pharmacy; with remarks on their preparation and uses; the means of distinguishing adulterations; of performing the more difficult and dangerous processes with ease and safety, &c. : the whole interspersed with practical cautions and observations / by W. Lewis, M. B. F. R. S.

  • Lewis, William, 1708-1781.
Date:
1799
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The new dispensatory : containing, I. The elements of pharmacy. II. The materia medica, or an account of the substances employed in medicine; with the virtues and uses of each article, so far as they are warranted by experience and observation. III. The preparations and compositions of the new London and Edinburgh pharmacopoeas; with some of the most celebrated foreign medicines; the most useful of those directed in the hospitals; sundry elegant extemporaneous forms, &c. digested in such a method as to compose a regular system of pharmacy; with remarks on their preparation and uses; the means of distinguishing adulterations; of performing the more difficult and dangerous processes with ease and safety, &c. : the whole interspersed with practical cautions and observations / by W. Lewis, M. B. F. R. S. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    CHAPTER II. 4 general viezv of (be Properties and Relations of Medicinal Sub' fiances. S E C T I. Vegetables, Vegetables are organifed bodies, containing, in certain vef- fels, different kinds of fubftances, in which their m'edicinal virtues confift, and which are found to differ greatly, not only in their quanritv, but likewife in their quality, according to the age of the plant, the feafon of the year, and the foil in which it is produced. Thus fome herbs in their infancy abound mof} with odoriferous matter J of which others yield little or none till they have, attained to a more advanced age. Many fruits, in their immature ftate, contain an auftere acid juice, which by maturation is changed into a fweet: others, as the orange, are firlT: warm and aromatic, and at'terwards, by degrees, become tilled with a flrong acid. The common grain, and fundry other feeds, when beginning to vegetate, are in tafte remarkably fweet ; yet the kernels of certain fruits prove, at the fame period, extremely acrid. The roots of fome of our indigenous plants, whofe juice is, during fummer, thin arid wa- tery, if wounded early in the fpring, yield ric^ balfamic juices, which, expofed to a gende warmth, foon concrete into folid gummy- refins, fuperior to many of thofe brought from abroad. In open expofures, dry foils, and fair warm feafons, aromatic plants prove ftronger and more fragrant, while thofe of an oppoiite nature grow weaker. To thefe particulars therefore due regard ought to be had in the collefling of plants for medicinal ufes. It may be proper to obferve alfo, that the different parts of one plant are often very different in quality from one another. Thus the bitter herb wormwood rifes from an aromatic root ; and the narcotic poppy-head includes feeds which have no narcotic power. Thofe differences, though very obvious in the conimonc*culinary plants, do not feern to have been fufficiently obferved, or attended to, in the medicinal ones. The medicinal juices of vegetables, and the aftive parts with wliich they are impregnated, may, generally, be extrafled and fe- parated, by fimple operations, widiout any alteration being made in their native qualities. Thcv may, likewife, be varioully altered and transformed, by operations not lefs funplc. By fermentation