Chemical and Physical Papers. 45 



every indication that the next legislature will enact laws which 

 will place Kansas in the front rank with those states that control 

 the character of their foods and drugs. 



The cause for adulteration in drugs is much the same as for adul- 

 teration in foods, and the remedies will be along the same lines. 

 So long as our grandmothers gathered the yearly stock of medicinal 

 herbs and dried them in the garret there was no more question 

 concerning their efficacy than there was as to the wholesomeness of 

 the food prepared by the same individual, but when the drug collect- 

 ing, as also a very large part of the food preparation, passed from un- 

 selfish, loving hands into those motived very largely by a desire for 

 pecuniary gain, people in general began to inquire more closely 

 into their origin. In opposition to this class of individuals, whose 

 aim primarily is perhaps not so much to defraud as to secure for 

 themselves more of the worldly goods, came those who demanded 

 the "square deal," and who began to devise simple tests whereby 

 the quality of the crude article could be at least roughly ascertained. 

 The discovery of alkaloids and other chemical principles in drugs, 

 to which their therapeutic efficiency is very largely attributed, gave 

 at once a chemical method for their valuation. The first vegetable 

 drug to be valued by this standard was opium, the drug in which 

 the first alkaloid was discovered. 



The real beginning of the movement io secure uniformity in 

 medicines antedates the first pharmacopoeia, that of 1820, but the 

 first pharmacopoeia to contain chemical tests of any importance 

 for^the valuation of drugs was the United States Pharmacopoeia of 

 ls80. Here we find standardized by volumetric assay thirty-seven 

 inorganic chemicals, six organic chemicals, and fifteen preparations 

 for an inorganic constituent, besides a few gravimetric assays, in- 

 cluding the assay of two drugs — opium and cinchona — for alkaloidal 

 constitutents. In the next revision of this pharmacopoeia the list 

 of standards was much extended, and in the latest revision of this 

 book, the eighth, commonly called the "United States Pharmacopoeia 

 of 1900," this list was still further extended. Comparing the num- 

 ber of quantitative tests in this book with those in the previous 

 pharmacopoeia, we find that where we formerly had only 114 

 volumetric and 14 gravimetric assays, we now have 149 volumetric 

 and 35 gravimetric assays. 



The articles standardized in the pharmacopoeia of 1900 conven- 

 iently come under three heads : First, the chemical substances ; 

 second, the crude products derived from the vegetable and animal 

 kingdom ; and third, the preparations or the medicines compounded 



