University of Virginia Library

CHEMISTRY AND MATERIA MEDICA.

Professor Emmet.—This School is divided into two classes; one of Chemistry,
the other of Materia Medica and Pharmacy.

In the lectures on Chemistry, which are delivered twice a week throughout
the session, all the important applications of the science to Pharmacy and Medicine
are noticed and amply illustrated. In treating of the various Salts,
Acids, &c., their characters, properties and adulterations, are considered both
as Chemical and Medicinal agents.

The first part of the course is devoted to the consideration of inorganic substances,
and the laws of chemical combination; the subsequent lectures are appropriated
to organic bodies, comprising the history, analysis and properties of
animal and vegetable substances, with peculiar reference to the active principles
most usually employed in Medicine.

In the lectures on Materia Medica and Pharmacy, which are delivered once
a week throughout the session, the subjects are treated on in the following order:
Pharmaceutical processes; preparations, both officinal and extemporaneous;
combination as altering and influencing the medicinal qualities of substances;
classification; lastly, the physical characters, history and therapeutic
properties of the individual articles.

In the chemical course, the fullest illustrations by means of experiments,
diagrams, &c. are invariably employed; and in that on Materia Medica and
Pharmacy, specimens of medicinal substances in their simple state, as well as
the officinal preparations of which they form the basis, are constantly laid before
the class. To aid still more, drawings and plates of the plants furnishing
the principal articles of the vegetable Materia Medica, and when practicable,
recent and dried specimens of the plants themselves will be exhibited.

Books recommended—Turner's Chemistry, Wood and Bache's United States
Dispensatory, Paris' Pharmacologia.