Devoted to disease by baker, butcher, grocer, wine-merchant, spirit-dealer, cheesemonger, pastry-cook, and confectioner; the physician is called to our assistance; but here again the pernicious system of fraud, as it has given the blow, steps in to defeat the remedy;—the unprincipled dealers in drugs and medicines exert the most diabolical ingenuity in sophisticating the most potent and necessary drugs, (viz. peruvian bark, rhubarb, ipecacuanha, magnesia, calomel, castor-oil, spirits of hartshorn, and almost every other chemical preparation in general demand;) and chemical preparations used in pharmacy; and the fraud has increased to so alarming an extent, says Mr. Accum, and his assertion is borne out by the experience of every one familiar with chemistry, that nine-tenths of the drugs and medicines in use that are vended by dealers, even of respectability and reputation, according to the usual interpretation of those words, “and who would,” as that gentleman emphatically expresses himself, “be the _last_ to be suspected,” ARE ADULTERATED. And what tends to aggravate the evil is that manufactories and mills on “an amazingly large scale” are constantly at work in this metropolis for the manufacture of spurious drugs. From these licensed elaboratories of disease, the adulterated articles are vended to unprincipled druggists, at less than a third of the price of the genuine article. And as there are no certain tests or methods of detecting the fraud, the consequence is, that the physician’s prescription is rendered useless, and the most consummate skill often baffled in the subjection of disease. Some idea of the extent of the adulteration of drugs may be formed, when it is stated that a spurious peruvian bark is sometimes sold, compounded of mahogany saw-dust and oak-wood, ground into powder, with a proper proportion of genuine quinquina; and that magnesia, even the calcined sort, is adulterated with lime. Chemical cunning has even contrived to extract the quinquina, in which consists the whole virtue of the bark, leaving it a completely inert mass. And even the quinine itself is sophisticated, being frequently contaminated with lime, tallow, sugar, and sulphate of cinchonas.