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 medical 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.