PHATMACY, in a comprehensive sense, means the department of natural which treats of the collection, preparation, and pm serration of medicines, and also of the art o Idisperuing them according to the fortnulle or prescriptions of medical practitioners. It is how ever more commonly used in a limited sense, as a branch of chemical science, and termed pharmaceutical chemistry, or the application of the laws of chemistry to them substances which are employed for the cure of diseases, so as to render them more commodious, or their administration more easy, and their action more perfect and certain. It should not be understood as merely depending upon some mecha nical processes, such as trituration, rasping, or othor means of sub division, or even the simpler chemical actions involved in the processes infusion inuon or decoction, but as requiring a knowledge of vegetable physiology, and an aoquaintance with the chemical constitution of the substances to be prepared. In many continental nation, this depart
ment is the subject of very strict legal enactments, and farms an Im portant part of medical police, especially as regards the dispensing of poisonous drugs; while in Britain any one who chooses may affix tho terms chemist and druggist to his name, and may deal in the most useful or dangerous ingredients, without that previous education which would fit him to be the appropriate assistant to the physician, whose most judicious plans are often frustrated by the ignorance or careless ness of those to whom the compounding of his prescriptions are entrusted. Efforts are making both in parliament and out, by the Sale of Poisons bill, and other measures, and still more by the precautionary exertions of the Pharmaceutical Society, founded by the lath Jacob Bell to remove this reproach. (MATERTA MEDICA.