The advanced state of BOTANICAL SCIENCE will now prevent the recurrence of those doubts and difficulties which have formerly embarrassed the history of vegetable remedies, by furnishing a strictly philosophical language, independent of all theory, and founded upon natural structure, and therefore necessarily beyond the controul of opinion; while the advancement of chemical knowledge, by enabling us better to distinguish and identify the different substances we employ, will also materially assist in preventing the confusion which has formerly oppressed us. At the same time, I am unwilling to join in the commendations so liberally bestowed upon our chemical nomenclature; nay, I am disposed to consider it as a matter of regret that the names of our medicinal compounds should have any relation to their chemical composition, for in the present unsettled state of this science, such a language must necessarily convey theory instead of truth, and opinions rather than facts; in short, it places us at the mercy and disposal of every new hypothesis, which may lay our boasted fabric in ruins, and in its place raise another superstructure, equally frail in its materials and ephemeral in its duration: thus CORROSIVE SUBLIMATE was a _muriate_ of Mercury, or an _oxy-muriate_, until Sir H. Davy established his new theory of chlorine, and then it became a _bi-chloride_; at some future period, Chlorine will be found to be a compound, and then it must have another name; for the same reason the term CALOMEL,[83] is surely to be preferred to _sub-muriate_, or _Chloride_. TARTARIZED ANTIMONY, again, has been called by our nomenclatural reformers the _Tartrate of Antimony and Potass_; but is it a triple compound? Gay Lussac thinks not, and considers it as a combination, in which _Cream of Tartar_ acts the part of a simple acid. Again,—we have only to revert to the nomenclature of the Salts in our Materia Medica to discover the actual change in meaning which the same word has undergone in a very few years. It was originally understood that the term _Sub_, when prefixed to the generic name of a Salt, indicated the presence of certain qualities depending upon an excess of base; but now, forsooth, the term has reference only to atomic composition, without any regard to qualities.[84] That salt alone being acknowledged as a true _Sub_-salt, in which there is less than one atom of acid to each atom of base; thus our “_Sub_-carbonate of Soda,” is no longer considered a _Sub_-salt, for the reason above stated; and notwithstanding the predominance of its alkaline characters, it is known to chemists by the appellation of _Carbonate_ of soda. It is far from my intention to question the propriety of these changes, I only maintain that, amidst such chemical doubts, the Pharmaceutist is the last person who should become arbiter; let him await the issue in unobtrusive silence, and take care that the language of Pharmacy partakes of the same neutrality.