THE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



193 



Some of the medical critics point to 

 the numerous preparations of one and 

 the same drug, for instance, of opium, 

 iron, mercury, etc., as being a "useless 

 burden" on the memory of students of 

 materia medica and on that of incipient 

 practitioners. But they forget that the 

 Pharmacopoeia is not designed as a text 

 book of materia medica for students of 

 medicine, each teacher of therapeutics 

 having the right and privilege to advise 

 his hearers to disregard those pharmaco- 

 poeial articles which he may deem unim- 

 portant or useless. In other words, each 

 teacher of materia medica or therapeu- 

 tics has the opportunity of putting before 

 his students a Pharmacopoeia of his own 

 construction, which will, no doubt, be 

 quite limited in extent. And here it may 

 be safely asserted that if every teacher of 

 materia medica in this country were to 

 produce such a work representing his 

 own ideas, an examination of all these 

 works would show that the views of the 

 authors on the value of many remedies 

 are widely varying. On the other hand, 

 it would show that all of these works, 

 without exception, would contain uni- 

 formly, many remedies used and approv- 

 ed by the authors, which are not con- 

 tained in the Pharmacopoeia at all. 



While the construction and periodical 

 revision of a Pharmacopoeia must be the 

 joint work of the medical and pharma- 

 ceutical professions, if it is to bear the 

 authoritative stamp which it ought to 

 possess, the finished work is of far more 

 importance to the pharmacist than to the 

 physician. To the latter it is mainly of 

 interest only in so far as it tells him what 

 drugs or preparations of any drug are 

 ofl&cial and therefore surely available to 

 him, and what their strength is- To the 

 pharmacist it is of primary importance, 

 as he has to work by it to produce the 

 remedies which the physician requires. 

 It is certain, however, that the work 



would be more frequently consulted by 

 the physician, and be of more practical 

 value to the pharmacist, if it gave infor- 

 mation concerning the average doses of 

 the several articles. The absence of dos- 

 es has frequently been complained of, 

 and is really, one of the most serious ob- 

 stacles in the way of a more general pop- 

 ularization of the work. However, as is 

 (or should be) well known, the charge of 

 wilfully omitting the doses can not be 

 laid at the door of the Committee of Re- 

 vision, because the latter was distinctly 

 ordered by the Pharmacopoeial Convent- 

 ions both of 1880 and 1890 not to insert 

 doses in the Pharmacopoeia. The blame 

 if there be any, must be shouldered by 

 the medical profession, whose representa- 

 tives deemed the introduction of doses un- 

 wise, because liable to create the impress- 

 ion that any overstepping of the limits of 

 the dose laid down in the Pharmacopoeia, 

 even though it may have been justified 

 and necessary in the judgment of the 

 prescriber in any particular case, might 

 lead him into trouble. It is believed, 

 however, that there is no good reason to 

 apprehend such a result. It would be 

 very easy to choose such a phraseology 

 in the passages referring to doses as 

 would leave the prescriber at full liberty 

 to adjust them at his discretion. 



While the introduction of doses into 

 the Pharmacopoeia could easily be effect- 

 ed without creating any risk to the pre- 

 scriber, there is, however, another and 

 more serious obstacle in its way, and 

 that is the diversity of opinion prevailing 

 among the authorities in therapeutics as 

 to what are the average doses of the sev- 

 eral remedies. Yet even this difficulty 

 can be overcome, provided only that the 

 medical profession at large will consent 

 to at least authorize their representatives 

 on the committee to act for them in this 

 matter. It is a principle accepted and 

 followed by the present Committee on 



