Pereira, Jonathan. The Elements of Materia Medica and Therapeutics (vol. 2); Enlarged and Improved by the Author; Including Notices of most of the Medicinal Substances in Use in the Civilized World, and forming an Encyclopaedia of Materia Medica. Philadelphia: Blanchard and Lea, 1854. Third American Edition. [7494]
This second volume is complete in regards to Organic substances, see explanation below.
Full sheep with a black leather spine title label, gilt rules to spine, 6 1/4 x 9 1/4 inches, some surface scuffs to leather but with no cracks or damage, binding is tight. xxxvi., 2 plates, 1226 clean pp., illustrated. Very good. Leather bound.
The author's original plan of this work was to include both inorganic & organic substances alphabetically in two volumes, and it was first published in this form. This last edition has a different arrangement, with the two volumes now divided by Mineral substances (vol. i.) and Organic substances (vol. ii.) The two volumes were not published at the same time, and this volume was the last to be published.
"...the Organic Materia Medica has been especially enlarged. The additions comprise four hundred pages of new matter; and the articles of materia medica, of which a complete medical and scientific history is given, amount to three hundred and sixty...The history of a drug, as it is given in these volumes, is not a dry description of its physical characteristics and medicinal uses. Philology, Natural History, Botany, Chemistry, Physics, and the Microscope, are all brought forward to elucidate the subject; and the reader thus acquires a full scientific knowledge of each article of materia medica before he is introduced to a description of its effect on plants, animals, and man, or to th evarous theories of its operation, and the different uses to which it has been applied in ancient and modern times."
This volume treats with plants & animals used in the making of medicine.
Jonathan Pereira (1804-1853), b. & d. in London, England. As a medical doctor he had a practice in London, and was lecturer on chemistry at the Royal College of Surgeons (1826), professor of materia medica and lecturer in chemistry at the Aldersgate Medical School (1832), and in 1839 made professor and lecturer at the London Hospital. He was elected professor of materia medica at the school of the Pharmaceutical Society (1843), and became consulting physician at the London Hospital (1851).
