Reviews and Bibliographical Notices.

A Manual of Organic Materia Medica and Pharmacognosy. By Lucius E. Sayre, Dean of the School of Pharmacy, Professor of Materia Medica and Pharmacy in the University of Kansas. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Son & Co. 1895. Pp. 555.

Professor Sayre issued a work in 1879, entitled "Organic Materia Medica and Pharmacal Botany," which has been out of print a number of years. The present volume is in a slight degree a revision of that work.

Part I, of about 85 pages, treats of Pharmacal Botany, and Part II, comprising 385 pages, is devoted to Organic Materia Medica and Pharmacognosy. In this part the author adopts two systems of classification:

(i) Arrangement of drugs according to their most prominent physical characteristics.
(2) Arrangement according to botanical relationship.

The former is quite brief, but by a system of numbers, a drug in this class can readily be found in the second class, where it is fully described.

In the second class each drug is treated systematically as follows: Botanical Characteristics, Habitat, Description, Constituents, Action and Uses, Official Preparations. There are 543 well-executed illustrations distributed through the work, and they add very materially to its value.

Appendix A. Insects Injurious to Drugs. Under this title, eight pages of illustrated matter are given, which cannot but be of value.

Appendix B. Organic Remedies Formed by Synthesis. Over forty pages are devoted to brief descriptions of what might be termed the newer materia medica.

Appendix C, treats of Pharmacal Microscopy. A glossary and full index complete the work.

The book is modern in every sense. It is modern in the order of treatment and in the facts detailed. The student will find it an indispensable companion, and the pharmacist and physician can turn to it as an excellent work of reference.

The publishers have done credit to themselves on the mechanical part of the work.

The American Journal of Pharmacy, Vol. 67, 1895, was edited by Henry Trimble.