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DRUGS

Volume 501 · 147 words · 1797 Edition

(see Enzyt.) are so commonly counterfeited, or at least adulterated, that, in London, the royal college of physicians, it is well known, has long ago appointed a court of examiners to investigate the goodness of drugs and medicines in the different chemists and apothecaries shops. The counterfeit, however, is made up with such dexterity, that not only the merchant and drug-broker, but even the man of skill is sometimes deceived; and indeed nothing can detect this imposition but a practical knowledge of chemistry. We therefore recommend it to every father of a family to study our Supplementary article Chemistry with this view, if with no other; for whatever be the faults of that article, we have lost much labour if it be not sufficiently perspicuous to enable every man, not an absolute stranger to physical science in all its branches, to detect the common impostures of drug-sellers.