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is imported or purchased for the manufacture of quinine; the other 

 for powdering. It comes invoiced from five cents to one dollar per 

 pound, according to the place of purchase, and the quality of the 

 bark. Peruvian barh, fit to be used in medicine, can only be bought 

 at the place where produced, at from thirty-five to seventy and eighty 

 cents per pound. 



"No pure Aleppo scammony has, for a long time, been imported 

 through the New York custom-house, because the article in inferior 

 strength and purity has taken its place in the market. The Smyrna 

 scammony is always adulterated with some worthless vegetable ex- 

 tract, flour, ashes and clay. An article called Smyrna scammony 

 (and a fair imitation) is occasionally imported, which has proved to 

 be a combination of jalap, gamboge, chalk, gum Senegal, and ivory 

 black, without a particle of real scammony in its composition. 



"Thousands of pounds of worthless rhubarb root are sent out an- 

 nually to this country for a market, by foreign speculators, princi- 

 pally from England. London being the greatest drug market in 

 the world, it is but reasonable to suppose that large quantities of 

 crude drugs, of a greatly deteriorated and inferior quality, must ne- 

 cessarily be constantly accumulating in their warehouses, which, on 

 account of the long-existing laws of that country, cannot find a 

 home market, and, in consequence, must either be destroyed, or ex- 

 ported to some place where there is no law to prevent their intro- 

 duction. The article of rhubarb I have alluded to, is found, on 

 examination, to be either greatly deteriorated by age, or as having 

 been deprived of its medicinal virtues by decoction, for the purpose 

 (as with the Peruvian bark above named) of manufacturing extracts. 



" This worthless drug is generally found to be what was once East 

 India rhubarb, and is invoiced at from four to fourteen cents per 

 pound, when, at the same time, the most ordinary fresh rhubarb of 

 the kind, fit to be used for medicine, cannot be purchased, at the 

 place of production, for less than from thirty-five to fifty dollars 

 per hundred pounds. This trash is bought up by speculators for 

 powdering, and is sold to the unsuspecting retailer as a * fair ar- 

 ticle.' 



"More than one-half of the cinnamon imported into New York 

 during the past year was a very inferior article; some of it nearly 

 tasteless, on account of its virtue having been extracted by distil- 

 lation, in the manufacture of the essential oil. Most of the oil of 

 cinnamon comes more or less adulterated with inferior oils ; and the 

 same may be said of most of the other medicinal essential oils. 



