DRUGS; DRUGGISTS. The difference between drugs and chemicals is vague and indeterminate ; and the professions of the chemist and druggist and the apothecary are in like manner generally confounded together in popular estimation. The rules established by the medical corporations, such as the Col lege of Physicians, the College of Surgeons, and the Apothecaries' Company, have had much to do in producing this uncertainty. The acids, alkalies, salts, and oxides, used in largest quantity, are made on a scale which requires complete manufacturing arrange ments, with large furnaces, stills, and other apparatus. Such is the case in respect to sulphuric and nitric acids, chlorides of lime and of sodium, alum, &c. ; such articles are made by manufacturing chemists, at the vast chemical works which are met with at Glas gow, Liverpool, Newcastle, Hull, and Bristol. A. retail shopkeeper who calls himself a che mist and druggist, is a chemist in so far as he retails, and understands the general character of, the chemicals made on a large scale by others ; while he may be regarded as a drug gist to the extent that he understands, and sells by retail, the substances used in medicine. If he can himself prepare, on a small scale, a considerable number of the substances which he sells, it is now customary to term him a pharmaceutist or pharmaceutical chemist.
The druggists of the metropolis have agreed to send a very extensive and valuable collec tion to the Exhibition of 1851, illustrative of the chemical and pharmaceutical productions of the country. The towns of Manchester,
Glasgow, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne have also taken very active steps in order to secure a complete representation of the chemical ma nufactures of the country.
Dr. Normandy has recently published a valuable work on drugs and chemicals, under the name of ' The Commercial Handbook of Chemical Analysis' It is especially designed to afford aid in the detection of fraud in the manufacture of food, drugs, and chemicals. The list of articles of which the processes of adulteration, and the means of detection, are given, is very comprehensive ; including not only ordinary viands, as bread, porter, tea, coffee, chocolate, and cocoa, spirits, liquors, and wines, but the drugs used in medicine, and a great variety of miscellaneous sub stances. They are alphabetically arranged, for convenience of reference.
Country druggists,' it has been remarked, form a class of persons to whom this book would he very serviceable; for, although there are of course highly creditable exceptions, particularly in great provincial towns, the bulk of them are not distinguished for che mical or even pharmaceutical knowledge. Few are capable of conducting an analysis or or ganic research, and they are frequently im posed upon by wholesale dealers, who send them damaged or spurious drugs, which, if administered in dangerous maladies, might induce aggravation of disease, and very pro. bably cause death'