Alfred Taylor recommends glycerine as the best fluid for removing blood stains, which have not been exposed to the action of hot water, since it does not dry, and therefore the microscope can be used at one's leisure in the examination of the corpuscles. Whatever evidence a chemical examination of blood may furnish, it is to a certain cxtent presumptive, since there are no positive chemical tests which will reveal its presence. We can only show the presence of the different constituents of this fluid, and then the conclusion will be so strongly presumptive that it will closely approximate to-yes even equal, positive demonstration. With the microscope conjoined, there can be no doubt about the matter; and it should always be employed in conjunction with the chemical experiments on the suspected spots.

In closing the report, the committee feel that the contributions of Chemistry during the past year have neither been small nor unimportant, to that profession, we have all selected as the business of our lives to study and investigate. Often its cultivators are too rash and careless in their deductions from the various facts which have collected in the course of experiment. These must not be taken as arguments against the data on which they were founded, but as incentives to a more thorough study of the importance and proper relation of these data. Chemistry is a science, so to speak, of yesterday, and yet, like a young David, it has accomplished the overthrowal of the Goliah of superstition and ignorance. It must be employed as the servant of the physician-not with the view of utterly rejecting all other means of acquainting himself with the animal body, in health and in disease-but to substantiate and confirm what is indicated by those other means. Under such circumstances, it wlll be found one of the most useful of all the collateral sciences, in elucidating the secrets of the profession and the saying of Libavius-a student of Paracelsus-may be understood, "Medicus ille nequit esse magnus, cui chymia non est magna."

The report was accepted and ordered to be sent to the executive committee for publication.

Dr. Medcalfe made the following report from the committee on Conversational meetings:

The committee on conversational meetings report, that for the furtherance of social intercourse in the profession-they have united with a committee of the Faculty, and formed the Medical and Surgical Society of Baltimore-which meets monthly and is now in successful operation.

Respectfully,

W. H. MEDCALFE,

Chairman.

The report was accepted and ordered to the executive committee for publication.

Dr. Fleming, from the committee on memoirs, asked to be excused from making any report. Granted.

Dr. David Stewart made the following report from the committee on the U. S. Pharmacopœia :

Since the last meeting of the State Medical and Chirurgical Faculty, your committee has been officially notified that the first edition of the Pharmacopoeia has been expended, and it is proposed to publish another edition in a cheaper form, for more general distribution-say at seventy-five cents per copy. The chairman of this board, being the representative of Maryland in the publishing committee, will have an opportunity of meeting the delegates from other states in order to authorize this step, and convey from your body any suggestion you may wish to make. He has already had a conference with the President of the last National Convention, Geo. B. Wood, who is also chairman of the committee of revision and publication: and suggested that two interleaved copies be sent to each committee that has been appointed to represent the several Medical and Pharmaceutical Associations in the next decennial convention.

We hope that your secretary will preserve the annual reports of our committee since 1850, that we may transcribe them into these

interleaved Pharmacopoeias, when received: as we have not been able to use any of the seventeen copies of the Pharmacopeia, received in 1850, for this purpose; they having been disposed of before receiving your order to have three of them interleaved;except the three copies that have been usually appropriated to the use of your library. During the past year, your committee have been deprived of the privilege of examining the four journals that represent the progress of science in relation to Chemistry and Pharmacy, viz: The two English Journals of Chemistry, and the Philadelphia and New York Journals of Pharmacy; and they regret to notice the discontinuance of the latter for want of patronage.

By personal application to intelligent, practical pharmacians of our city, and by a review of the formula now in use, we are satisfied that many imperfections still exist in our National Pharmacopria, and some changes that are so important and desirable that we deem it proper to suggest them now, though many years may be required for their accomplishment.

We find that by a singular synchronism many scientific and practical pharmacians are uniting to rest the blame of the imperfections referred to, upon our absurd division of the pound and gallon, and our various pounds, gallons, ounces, scruples, and even grains; and the extreme difficulty of converting the one into the other, or finding the relation of the standard measure to the weight. It is not by mere accident that so many intelligent men happen, at the same time, to arrive at the same conclusion, though separated in different parts of our country.

In order to avoid blending the results or the defects referred to with their cause, we will defer the illustrations until our next annual report and confine this to an attempt to remove their cause, as we believe, that the most important change in the United States Pharmacopoeia, that has been suggested, will not compare in its effects upon the accuracy and convenience of its formula with that now about to be made. All scientific men have recognized the decimal system of weights and measures as the language of science throughout the world, and as it prevails in all modern works of science, and is universally adopted in all chemical operations, and standard treatises or journals of chemistry in all civilized countries; so we hope to secure its adoption in Pharmacy, and propose that the mode of accomplishing this shall emanate from this society.

Your committee is aware of the difficulties in the way of its accomplishment, but these will not compare with the errors and inconvenience that have occurred in the use of three or four different kinds weights and measures. See 100 page, of 109 No. of American Journal of Pharmacy.

The importance of accomplishing this object is manifest to every one; but the mode of accomplishing it is the difficulty, especially in view of the difficulty encountered in France when a change was ordered; but the failure there by mere legislation, and the subsequent triumphant success of the people in adopting this system upon the voluntary principle, should not discourage but stimulate us to benefit by their example, and avoid legislating upon the subject as the same object can be accomplished by simple elective affinity-especially if we annul all legislation in our Pharmacopoeia in the opposite direction, and use the word parts instead of pounds, also substituting the word parts for gallons and pints. If this were done, and the formal recognition of all the different varieties of avoirdupois and troy pounds and all other weights and measures, was made in the form of a table-from which the operator could select the most convenient variety-then there would be no chance of error in observing the proportions indicated by the Pharmacopœia by any of the varieties of weights or measures, whether English, French, German, avoirdupois or troy; or if the dime and half dime or dollar, or any decimal portion of it were used.

One object of this change would be the introduction of the decimal system corresponding with our coin, and gradually the use of the decimal principle in the construction of all new formula and the reconstruction of many of the old ones. For instance: Dilute nitric acid may as well contain one-tenth of its bulk of real acid as one-ninth; and muriatic acid may as well contain onetenth as any other proportion. Vinegar of squills may as well be made of one-tenth squills, as one-ninth or one part to eight, as in the Pharmacopoeia, and Dover's powder is already constructed on the decimal principle, both of its active elements being in proportion of one-tenth.

Three steps are then necessary to prepare the way for the accomplishment of our object:

1st. Abolish all legislation in the opposite direction in the Pharmacopoeia.

2d. Recognize all known varieties of weights and measures in the mere act of compounding the officinal preparations-by placing them in connection with the decimal weights and measures in the form of one table where, at a glance, the decimal proportion of each can be obtained.

3d. Construct all new formulæ on the decimal principle, and reconstruct old formula where it can be done without materially altering the dose as in the case of syrups and other weak prepa

rations.

Much more time will be required to adapt the Pharmacopoeia to this system, than to introduce these convenient weights and measures, and your committee is confident that, before another decade, the decimal system will exclude all others and be as essential to the integrity and scientific position of our Pharmacopoeia as the latin version was a few years since; and it will as certainly displace the present miserable system of weights and measures as the simple displacement funnel has cast aside all the various and complicated apparatus of our fore-fathers. At this moment, it is the exclusive language of all scientific pharmacians in all their published essays, that are intended for perusal abroad as well as at home.

The report was accepted and referred to the executive committee for publication.

Dr. Monmonier offered the following preamble and resolution. Adopted:

Whereas, during the past year, by the dispensation of Divine Providence, this Faculty has sustained a loss in the death at a ripe age, of two of its highly esteemed and accomplished members; Drs. Ashton Alexander and Samuel K. Jennings of this city, and desiring to manifest their sincere respect for their memories,therefore be it,

Resolved, that by the death of Drs. Ashton Alexander and Samuel K. Jennings, we have lost two valued and esteemed friends and associates, whose names and fame are closely blended with the history of this Faculty, and that we deeply sympathise with their families in their bereavement.