CHAPTER 1 

 THE MICROSCOPE IN MODERN PHARMACY 



The Federal Pure Food and Drugs Act went into effect June 30, 

 1906. The act is enforced by the Bureau of Chemistry of the U. S. 

 Department of Agriculture. The Bureau has adopted the U. S. P. 

 (United States Pharmacopoeia) and the N. F. (National Formulary) 

 as the legal standards of the quality and purity of drugs. The U. S. P. 

 IX contains the microscopic descriptions of the crude as well as of the 

 powdered vegetable drugs and no pharmacist can use the legal drug 

 standard intelligently unless he has had a thorough course in drug 

 microanalysis in a well equipped laboratory. 



The language and terminology descriptive of the drugs and reme- 

 dial agents mentioned in the U. S. P. and the N. F., constitute the 

 "purity rubric." It soon developed that the legal descriptions and 

 definitions were defective in many ways, as will be more fully set forth 

 in Chapter III of Part I. Controversies have arisen as to the 

 interpretations to be put upon some of the drug descriptions and as 

 to what constitutes wholly negligible and unimportant accidental 

 additions and admixtures. The introduction into the U. S. P. of 

 the microscopic descriptions of vegetables has had the effect of greatly 

 increasing the legal value of the drug descriptions. A very brief 

 introduction into the history of the use of the compound microscope 

 in pharmaceutical practice is not out of place. 



The progress in histological investigation, animal as well as vegeta- 

 ble, has kept pace with the progress in the manufacture of lenses for 

 simple and compound microscopes. In other words, histology had its 

 birth with the discovery of the microscope and has become perfected 

 in direct ratio with the improvements in the artificial aids to vision. 



The microscope in its earliest and simplest form consisted of a 

 convex lens of some transparent substance. Magnifying lenses were 

 known long before the discovery of glass. The wise Seneca (first 

 century), who was apparently well versed in the properties of lenses, 

 states that the ancients noticed that writing viewed through glass 



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