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The medical profession in this country have established, and well 

 sustained, a number of able medical journals; but, owing to the same 

 crying evils, these useful and necessary aids in promulgating 

 knowledge have greatly disappointed their friends, by exhibiting 

 discrepancies almost too great for credulity. Examine the catalogue 

 of adulterated medicines, and you have the key to the secret. Ex- 

 cessive doses of medicine are prescribed in some sections of our 

 country, particularly the south and west; portions which, if pure, 

 might well startle the eastern and northern practitioner, and used 

 anywhere would endanger life. Quinine is used, in many cases, in 

 incredible quantities ; but this is accounted for most rationally, by 

 the admixture of this valuable and necessary agent with salicine, 

 chalk, &c. In acute diseases, dependent upon locality and climate, 

 a difference in medical agents may be expected; but in chronic 

 affections, having a set of regular phenomena in every clime, these 

 discrepancies and contradictions would be perplexing, could they 

 not be traced to the adulterated agents prepared expressly for 

 "southern and western trade." 



Your committee deem the demands of the medical profession and 

 honest importers of drugs and medicines for protective legislation 

 reasonably well founded, and obviously just. These demands can 

 have no origin in selfishness, or design of pecuniary advancement. 

 Their requests flow from a higher, purer fountain. Humanity, self- 

 respect, and a just professional pride have prompted their petitions. 

 These petitioners are aware that the ill success of well-directed 

 skill gives rise to pretence and quackery in their worst forms. The 

 destruction of confidence brought about by fraudulent and adulte- 

 rated medicine, gives place and prominence to men whose qualifi- 

 cations give them no claim whatever to either confidence or respect. 



Various suggestions have been made to your committee, as to the 

 best means of remedying the evil complained of. They are princi- 

 pally: 1st. Increased duty on the adulterated article. 2d. Con- 

 demnation, re-exportation or destruction. For various reasons, they 

 have selected the latter as the wisest and safest course. To in- 

 crease the duty on adulterated medicines, would be but to place the 

 public sanction upon fraud, and would give the dishonest importer 

 and trafficker an important advantage, as he enters the articles at 

 his own price. Thus, in the case of the rhubarb root, already men- 

 tioned, entered at five cents per lb., a duty of even five hundred per 

 cent, would give the adulterated article the advantage of fifteen or 

 twenty cents per lb.; an advantage sufficient to tempt the cupidity 



