THE UNITED STATES PHARMACOPEIA.

Abstract

It is not my present purpose to add to the many reviews or criticisms of the Pharmacopeia, but to call attention to two conditions, hoping that steps may be taken by this Section looking to their improvement. The first is the general loss of interest on the part of physicians in the revision of the Pharmacopeia. The Pharmacopeia was called into being by physicians in 1820, and in 1850 pharmacists were admitted to the convention; since then physicians have gradually relinquished control to pharmacists, and to-day we are confronted with an anomalous condition, in that the committee of revision of 1900, consisting of twenty-five men, numbered nineteen pharmacists or men identified with pharmaceutic institutions, and but six whose interests were entirely with medicine. For example, Dr. Squibb was almost universally known as a manufacturing pharmacist. Only ten members of the committee of revision had the title of M.D. This condition