The American new dispensatory : containing general principles of pharmaceutick chemistry, chemical analysis of the articles of materia medica, pharmaceutick operations, materia medica, including several new and valuable articles, the production of the United States, preparations & compositions : with an appendix containing an account of mineral waters, medical prescriptions, the nature and medical uses of the gases, medical electricity, galvanism, an abridgement of Dr. Currie's reports on the use of water, the cultivation of the poppy plant, and the method of preparing opium, and several useful tables : the whole compiled from the most approved authors, both European and American / by James Thacher.

  • Thacher, James, 1754-1844.
Date:
1821
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The American new dispensatory : containing general principles of pharmaceutick chemistry, chemical analysis of the articles of materia medica, pharmaceutick operations, materia medica, including several new and valuable articles, the production of the United States, preparations & compositions : with an appendix containing an account of mineral waters, medical prescriptions, the nature and medical uses of the gases, medical electricity, galvanism, an abridgement of Dr. Currie's reports on the use of water, the cultivation of the poppy plant, and the method of preparing opium, and several useful tables : the whole compiled from the most approved authors, both European and American / by James Thacher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    intimate combination with oxygen, and in that proportion in which they are mutually saturated, it forms a very powerful acid, the nitrick acid ; and in lower degrees of oxygenation it forms compound gases which have no acid powers. With hydrogen, and probably a portion of oxy- gen, it forms ammonia, one of the alkalis ; it exists in some vegetable substances, and is a constituent principle of nearly all the varieties of animal matter. This sub- stance had been usually regarded as simple. 1 he recent researches which have arisen from the application of galvanick electricity to chemistry, have established some singular facts with regard to it ; whence the conjecture has been formed that it is a compound, and, in particular, that it is connected in chemical constitution with hydro- gen : but the subject is still involved in such obscurity as to preclude any certain conclusion. Atmospherick air, of which oxygen and nitrogen are the essential constituent parts, has merely the aggregate pro- perties of these two gases, their combination being so slight that no new powers are acquired from it ; and, as the oxygen is the more energetick ingredient, the chemi- cal agencies of this air depend chiefly on the operation of this principle. It yields oxygen toa numberof substances, with more or less rapidity, and thus changes their che- mical constitution. It sometimes acts too by communi- cating humidity ; and in a lew cases, by affording an elas- tick fluid, carbonick acid gas, which is diffused through it in small proportion. Its nitrogen exerts no active power, but apparently serves merely to dilute, and thus to mode- rate the action of the oxygen gas. Hydrogen is another elastick fluid, which in the system of modern chemistry has been regarded as elementary, and the importance of which, as a principle opposed to oxygen in its chemical powers, recent discoveries appear to establish. In its aerial form, in which form only it can be obtained uncombined, it is the lightest of all the elas- tick fluids, and the lightest substance therefore whose gravity we can ascertain. It is distinguished farther by its high inflammability ; it burns whenever an ignit- ed body is approached to it in contact with atmosphe- rick air, and explodes if previously mixed with the air. The product of its combustion is water, which is there- fore considered as a compound of it with oxygen. Com- bined with nitrogen, it forms ammonia : with the primary