PHARMACONEIA (ante). It may be proper here to - make the distinction between a plinrmacopma and a dispensatory. These terms have been used indis. eriminately, but there is it distinction among pharmacists, which is the word pliarmaeopma is derived from the Greek and signilies, "I make medicine." It ix strictly a collection of recipes or instructions for milking various medicinal corn pounds. or simple preparations, which are also !untie under the authority of a col huge or body of medical men, and are termed officinal. A dispensatory is a book which also treats of the preparation of medicines; but it moreover contains the natural as well as the medical history of the various. medicinal substances. A dispensatory in addition to officinal preparations may contain many others, and be published without official authority. A dispensatory is also to a more or less extent a teat on materia medica (q.v.), a branch of medical science which treats of the knowledge and action of mcdi tines, and may either treat of the action of individual medicines or embrace the whole range of the pharmacopeia, and occupy itself with the action of every simple, or compound. either upon a healthy or a diseased subject; that is to say, it may consider the physiological as well as the therapeutical action of medicines, therapeutics (q.v.) being that branch of the science which treats of the action of drugs as medicines strictly speak ing, or their action in disease, for this is often much different from their action on the healthy body, or their physiological action. A dispensatory is often, nay it is generally, a combination of a pharmacopeela, a materia medics, and a treatise on therapeutics, as far as the latter is not included in materia medica. This depends upon the signification placed upon the word therapeutics. Its original meaning, as derived from the Greek is
"I wait upon," or "I attend upon the sick," and includes not only the action of medi cines but their made npadministration in every respect, as regards time, frequency, or quantity, and the condition in which the patient is to be kept. This, the strict significa tion of the word therapeutics, is adopted by many, and of course embraces much of the practice of medicine. Others regard therapeutics as the science of the action of remedies only, and this is the way in which the word is generally employed. We have thus, for the sake of conciseness, briefly discussed this question under one need. The New York county and New York state medical societies in 1818 took measures for holding a con vention of delegates from various state medical societies and medical colleges, which met at Washington Jan. 1, 1820. The action taken then resulted in the appearance the same year of the that Pharmacopaia in the United States of America, a volume of 272 pages. The convention made provision for the holding of other conventions for revision every ten years, and such conventions were held in 1830, 1840, and 1850. The convention of 1860 received delegates from the army and navy, and from various colleges of pharmacy and pharmaceutical societies. The first edition of the United states Dispematory was issued in 1831. It has since that time passed through runny revisions, and has become double its original size, till at the present time it is really an eneycloptedia of therapeu tics, pharmacy% and materia medica. Several other excellent plairmacopeeias and dis pensatories have been published.