which, either from the personal experience of the members of the College, or from the credible authority of others in their favour, seemed to promise to be useful in the practice of medicine, and an attempt was made to render the chemical nomenclature more accurate and simple, by divesting it of many of the terms which the early chemists had employed, either from ostentation or from a desire of mysterious concealment. No lengthened examination can now be required of a work which, from its very nature, must, in a few years after its publication, have become in a great measure obsolete. It is sufficient to have shewn that the edition of the Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia, published under Dr Cullen's superintendence, fully kept pace with the progress of medicine and its collateral sciences, and was calculated to do credit to the body from which it emanated.*

Besides receiving the suggestions of his resident fellow-members on the subject of the Pharmacopoeia,

* In proof of the estimation in which this edition of the Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia was held, it may be mentioned that, besides a first impression of 2000 copies, a second edition of 1000 copies was agreed to in September 1775, which, by May 1778, was so far exhausted as to occasion an application from the publisher for permission to throw off other 2000 copies. It was reprinted at Rotterdam in the year subsequent to its publication at Edinburgh, and two editions of it were published in Germany under the superintendence of Professor Baldinger of Göttingen, the first in 1776, and the second at Bremen in 1782. The learned editor, in a lengthened preface prefixed to the first of these editions, speaks of it as" emendata omnino, et sapienti concilio contracta, ac passim novis medicamentis aucta, ut jure meritoque perpolita nuncupari possit, suisque auctoribus, viris eruditissimis, sagacissimis, rerum usu peritis, perquam digna.”

Dr Cullen corresponded with Sir John Pringle, who was a fellow both of the Edinburgh and of the London College of Physicians, and who at the time was President of the Royal Society of London. Sir John's letters contain a number of minute criticisms both on the proper matter of the Pharmacopoeia, and also on the dedication to the King, the adjustment of which seems to have been a matter of considerable difficulty. In receiving at last copies of the published work, Sir John Pringle expresses himself in regard to it in the following terms (19th August 1774):

"I hope the work will tend to the advancement of the reputation of our society; though perhaps not so much immediately as hereafter, when the rest of the medical world comes up with it, by acquiring such a degree of learning and good sense as may enable them to see and acknowledge the barbarity and absurdity which hitherto have reigned in almost all the works of this kind. I should judge that in point of simplicity and elegance of composition, where composition is required, the new Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia has got as far before the last London Pharmacopoeia," that published in 1746, "as that work excelled all others preceding it. Doubtless, however, we shall have fault found with several things, by some for having so far cast off the old farrago, and by others for not having availed ourselves of all the new lights. To the latter set of critics we shall be obliged, as their remarks may be turned to profit by those of us that shall be alive at the publication of the next edition."

Another matter connected with the College of Physicians, into which Dr Cullen entered very warmly, was the arrangements relating to the building of their present Hall. So early as 1756, the So early as 1756, the year of Dr Cullen's entrance into the College, the building of a new

hall for its meetings had been under contemplation. The College at that time had their meeting-room situated in the middle of a garden near the Cowgate Port; but the house having become ruinous, they did not choose to build in that situation. Their property having been bought in 1770, by the gentlemen of the Episcopal communion in Edinburgh, for the erection of a chapel-the Cowgate Chapel-the College, in the subsequent year, appointed a committee to consider of ways and means for purchasing a proper area and building a new hall. No very active steps, however, seem to have been taken till the presidency of Dr Cullen, who, early in 1775, reported matters as in an advancing state. Arrangements were promptly made with the Town Council for the area in the centre of one of the divisions of George Street, on which the hall now stands; a subscription was set on foot among the members; and before Dr Cullen's presidency terminated, he had submitted to the College a plan of the proposed new hall, designed by Mr Craig, architect-the nephew of the author of the Seasons, and the planner of the New Town of Edinburgh-which had been approved of by architects of reputation both at London and at home. By a letter from Sir John Pringle to Dr Cullen, it appears that the plan had been submitted to Mr Stuart, the author of the Antiquities of Athens. Out of compliment, I presume, to Dr Cullen, the College recommended to the Building Committee that the foundation should be laid at farthest before the end of November, that is, before the expiry of his presidentship; and, accordingly, the ceremony took place on the 27th of that month. On the 7th

May 1776, on Dr Cullen's reporting the arrangements with Mr Craig as ready for ratification, the unanimous thanks of the College were, upon a motion from the then President, returned to the Building Committee, and particularly to Dr Cullen for his very great and unwearied labours in forwarding and finishing the above business. These labours appear to have been continued during the progress of the building, till the College met in its new hall for the first time in August 1781.

As connected with the College of Physicians, there is another matter in which Dr Cullen took a part that may here be noticed. In all periods of the existence of medical incorporations, the harmony of these institutions has been frequently disturbed by attempts to draw a broad line of distinction between different branches of practice, as being more or less dignified or reputable in their nature; and to restrict the privilege of admission into particular corporations, to persons who devote themselves exclusively to the exercise of particular departments of the healing art. The College of Physicians of Edinburgh has, in its time, had its full share in the contentions arising out of such attempts. Its friends may congratulate themselves on these restrictions having been abandoned voluntarily, and at a more early period than by some kindred institutions; and it is satisfactory to find that Dr Cullen entertained just and liberal views upon this subject.

In 1754, the College had passed an act prohibiting their Fellows or Licentiates from taking upon themselves to use the employment of an apothecary,

or to have and keep an apothecary's shop. In 1765, in order, as they conceived, "to support that character and esteem which they had all along maintained, and to keep up that distinction which ought to be made between the members of the College and the practitioners of those branches of the healing art which have been always esteemed the least reputable," they resolved that for the future they would admit no person to be one of their Fellows whose common business it was either to practise Surgery in general, or Midwifery, Lithotomy, Inoculation, or any other branch of it in particular. This resolution was followed up by a proposal to make a law extending the same restriction to Licentiates of the College, which seems to have remained under the consideration of the College from May 1765 to February 1769, without receiving any vigorous opposition. But, at the latter period, an act declaring those who practised Surgery or any of its branches disqualified for being admitted Licentiates of the College, having been agreed to by a majority, a dissent from this determination was entered by Dr Thomas Young, who, from the year 1756, had held the office of Professor of Midwifery. In this dissent he was supported by his colleagues in the University, Drs Cullen, Monro, Ramsay, John Gregory and Black, and by Dr James Hay. In the further progress of the discussion, which lasted till May 1772, when the College reverted to their original resolution of prohibiting the practice of Surgery and its several departments by Fellows of their body only, Dr Cullen took, in a great measure, the lead at the meetings of the College. Two very elaborate papers on the sub