ABSTRACT
In Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein disputes the essential existence of an underlying linear time. Each periodical number necessarily conceives itself as speaking to the present, but how this present is conceived, and linked to the quotidian lives of its readers, varies both between periodicities and from title to title. Space is integral to any concept of quantitative time. Lived time loses its form and its social interest. When authorship is ascribed in the title, the only information given is a name, and there is no textual gloss to provide context. In Great Thoughts the gap between numbers is a source of anxiety. Like other weekly titles, trade journals such as the Chemist and Druggist deploy selected passing events in order to signal their link with the present. The Chemist and Druggist, although a specialist title, shares certain generic features with other weeklies. It is perhaps unsurprising then that the druggists reserve most of their fury for manufacturers of patent medicines.
