152 THE ALUMNI JOURNAL 



REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON STANDARDS AND TESTS 



OF THE UNITED STATES PHARMACOPOEIA 



AND NATIONAL FORMULARY.* 



NATIONAL FORAIULARY. 



The experience of your committee this year in relation to this 

 work has been the same as heretofore, no complaints of allusions 

 to it having been sent in. As you are aware the book is a collection 

 of formulas issued by the American Pharmaceutical Association, 

 which has greatness thrust upon it by the Pure Food and Drug 

 act of 1906, by which the formulary became a legal standard for 

 the preparations named in it. 



It would appear that m.anufacturing pharmacists have paid little 

 attention to the Formulary, but continue to sell elixers, syrups and 

 miscellaneous preparations (not named in the United States Phar- 

 macopoeia) made according to their own special formulas for which 

 each house has created a certain demand, although some houses 

 in addition to their own line are making the National Formulary 

 preparations in order to be able to meet any demand that may 

 arise for them in consequence of the National Formulary prop- 

 aganda work carried on in certain localities by members of the 

 retail trade. 



It has been the feeling of the trade generally that a mistake was 

 made in creating the National Formulary a legal standard, but so 

 far as your committee is aware no public expression of this appeared 

 until Professor Oldberg at the recent meeting of the American 

 Pharmaceutical Association in his address as president alluded to 

 it in the following words: 



"It is remarkable that the Congress of the United States should 

 have had a legal standard of the National Formulary, prepared, 

 owned and published by an association which has the power to 

 change its book any day, or to reduce its scope, or add to it, or 

 suspend its publication altogether. It was a ridiculous mistake 

 which will of course be corrected sooner or later." 



It is the opinion of your comm.itte that in voicing the above 

 Professor Oldberg expressed the opinion of many thinking men in 

 the trade, and that, while his statement was not acceptable to the 

 majority of his hearers, the truth of it will become more and more 

 apparent as time rolls on. 

 *Kead at the recent convention of N. A. W. D. 



