The French pharmacist Nicolas Jean-Baptiste Gaston Guibourt (1790 1867) first published this work in two volumes in 1820. It provided methodical descriptions of mineral, plant and animal substances. In the following years, Guibourt became a member of the Academie nationale de medicine and a professor at the Ecole de pharmacie in Paris. Pharmaceutical knowledge also progressed considerably as new methods and classifications emerged. For this revised and enlarged four-volume fourth edition, published between 1849 and 1851, Guibourt followed the principles of modern scientific classification....