prescriptions for compounding the Liquid Laudanum, how greatly that medicine varies in regard to its strength, and how liable a Physician is to be deluded in the Exhibition of Proper Doses; and in its Effects upon the human Body; and the same may be said of many of the other compounds.
I am apprehensive, that the Establishment of a Regular System of Pharmacy in America, would be of great utility to the Apothecaries; that it would increase their Business and diminish the troubles and care of those Physicians who compound their own Medicines.
In Europe there are certain Rules Established by law, for the Chusing, Preparing, Weighing, Measuring, Compounding, Distilling, Extracting, and Preserving of medicines; and if the Apothecaries do not strictly observe those Rules they are liable to punishment: they are, however, permitted to compound any other way if so ordered by some Learned Physicians for such Practitioners are allowed to order such Compositions for a Patient, as is thought most beneficial: and the same Rules and Regulations ought to be observed in this part of the world.
Another vanity has prevailed in this country, which has been the foundation of much discord amongst the Practitioners of physic: it arose from their being differently instructed in the Mysteries of the Medical Art. It has been customary for great Numbers of the Physicians to keep but one Dispensatory, hence, one has had an Ancient One of the London College; another has had one of that of Edenburgh; another
