Preface to the First Edition.

This Compend is based on the last revision of the U. S. Pharmacopoeia, on the regular text books of Materia Medica and Therapeutics, particularly those by Bartholow, Wood, Ringer, Stillé, Phillips, Piffard, Biddle, Trousseau, and Waring; and on the author's own notes of two courses of didactic and Clinical lectures by Professors Bartholow and Da Costa.

Intended as a book for medical students, brevity of statement is one of its principal features. At the same time, the essentials of the subject have been kept in view from a desire to make the book not only the best of its kind, but a compact compendium of the established maxims of therapeutical science, and the most advanced views concerning the physiological actions of drugs. The preparations noted under each title are those in most general use; to have described all would have been to unnecessarily burden the student's memory.

Fort Douglas, Utah, February, 1883.

Preface to the Sixth Edition.

In the last edition of this book the former text was almost entirely rewritten and greatly expanded. The opening sections on Preparations and Classification of Medicines were enlarged from nine to twenty-five pages, in the effort to do greater justice to those important branches of the subject. Nearly every drug section received more or less elaboration, and new matter was inserted upon 75 additional articles of the Materia Medica, of which 42 were described in new sections, and 33 in brief notices.

For this edition the text has again received a thorough revision, bringing it into conformity with the seventh revision of the U. S. Pharmacopoeia (1890). Articles have been inserted on Chloralamid, Hypual, Hydrogen Dioxide, Phenacetin, Phenocoll, Piperazin, Somnal, Sulphonal, Trional, etc., and the section on Prescription Writing has been elaborated in greater detail.

The author embraces this opportunity of again thanking his brethren, the teachers and students of medicine, for the favor which they continue to extend to his Compends. The rapid exhaustion of each edition of these books is the best evidence that his efforts for the systematizing and facilitating of their work are appreciated. The only return he can make is one which he has constantly aimed at, namely—that each edition should prove a better book than the preceding one.

Sam'l O. L. Potter.
San Francisco, October,

A Compend of Materia Medica, Therapeutics, and Prescription Writing, 1902, by Sam'l O. L. Potter, M.D., M.R.C.P.L.