Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery

Subjects:

Medical Treatment, Language, Gender, Chemistry, Religion

    Responds to an advertisement in the Medical Circular from the Edinburgh pharmaceutical firm T & H Smith for their 'aloina' or 'crystaline [sic] principle of aloes' which medical practitioners recommend to 'females both alive and in a combined form'. Draws attention to the grammatical infelicities of this advertisement, and suggests that females in a 'combined form' might mean dead females, but points out that medicine for the dead would be absurd. Concludes by suggesting that the vendor is better at 'metaphysical theology' than chemistry.