STANDARDS FOR MEDICINES— COOK 445 



uniformity of standards for medicines within that State. Inspectors 

 were appointed and specially trained chemists having estabhshed 

 chemical laboratories were developed to enforce these laws, and a high 

 degree of uniformity in medicines was thus established. Recently, 

 Congress and the medical and drug world have been agitated by 

 proposals that the Federal Food and Drugs Act be revised to be 

 made more effective and also to include cosmetics within its scope. 

 So far this law has not been passed, although several drafts have 

 been given careful study and are now pending in Congress. 



There is wide approval of such added legislation in the interest of 

 public health, and those who are affected have largely cooperated in 

 tr3ang to develop appropriate and enforceable laws. 



KEEPING THE STANDARDS MODERN 



If the descriptions and formulas established for medicines in 1820 

 were in force today they would be entirely inadequate. New medicinal 

 products are constantly developed through the activities of medical 

 research. Should these prove to be important therapeutic agents, 

 they properly find a place in the next pharmacopoeia and they call 

 for properly developed standards. Products which have long been 

 official frequently need modified tests to control their degree of purity 

 or to better determine their strength. Again, added tests are some- 

 times needed to check newly discovered foreign substances which 

 appear in compounds, perhaps because of modifications in manufac- 

 turing procedure. In other words, there is a constant necessity for 

 reviewing the standards of older compounds as well as establishing 

 tests for those which are new. 



In the last Pharmacopoeial Convention, held in 1930, the delegates 

 were mostly from the national and State associations and the colleges 

 of both medicine and pharmacy. There were also representatives of 

 the departments of the Government interested in health. These del- 

 egates developed the general policies governing the pharmacopoeial 

 revision and also elected the members of the committee of revision 

 to revise the standards and a board of trustees to direct the business 

 side of the organization. The committee of revision of the present 

 pharmacopoeia numbers 51 with a large group of auxiliary members 

 selected for their special abUity or knowledge in specific scientific 

 fields. The medical members of the committee are largely held re- 

 sponsible, in the initial stages of revision, for selecting the medicinal 

 substances which are considered of sufficient importance to be officially 

 recognized. 



The other members of the committee are pharmacists, chemists, 

 botanists, bacteriologists and others representing the many related 

 sciences. These members assume the responsibility for fixing stand- 



