PREFACE.
TWENTY-FOUR years have elapsed since the Bengal Pharmacopoeia was issued in Calcutta, "by order of Government." Since then great advances have been made in our knowledge of the medicinal properties and therapeutic uses of the drugs indigenous to our Eastern Empire. Some of them have already been admitted into the British Pharmacopoeia; whilst many others, having been subjected to the test of clinical observation, have been found to possess considerable value as therapeutic agents, and to be well worthy of the attention of the medical profession in India. The information relating to them, however, is scattered through a large number of periodical and standard works, which are inaccessible to the great mass of medical officers serving in India, and therefore unavailable for general reference.
The British Pharmacopoeia issued by the Medical Council of England in 1865 authorized great changes in the nomenclature and composition of many important preparations; and still greater changes have been effected in the edition of 1867. As the use of that work is enjoined by Government authority, all pre-existing pharmacopoeias, and other works having special reference to pharmacy and materia medica in use in Great Britain, unless brought up to that standard, are rendered, to a certain extent, valueless to the British practitioner.
