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and judiciously applied, will add more to the general efficiency of the chemist than 

 the same amount applied in any other direction. I believe that no chemist should 

 proceed with the chemical examination of a drug of this class until after he has examined 

 it physically, with or without the microscope, according to the requirements of the 

 case, to ascertain its general characters and particularly whether it is a single article 

 or a mixture. This requires a fair knowledge of macroscopy and microscopy, as to 

 both methods and drugs. The time and labor necessary to acquire such a knowl- 

 edge are not Excessive. As to all the official and important unofficial drugs, it should 

 be gained by from one hundred to one hundred and fifty hours of practical work, 

 say two or three hours per week during a two-year course. 



The following examples will serve to illustrate the class of drugs to which refer- 

 ence is here made: Goto and paracoto bark are among the most reliable therapeutic 

 agents in the materia medica, often the only means of saving life in severe cases of 

 dysentery, yet the use of this medicine has almost ceased owing to the fact that the 

 genuine drug is now scarcely ever seen. In two years the writer has not known of 

 an importation of it to the United States that was not spurious. A brief macroscopic 

 examination will enable anyone immediately to recognize every one of these pre- 

 tenders. The same statement applies, in a somewhat less serious degree, to Winter's 

 bark, a most valuable aid in nutrition. 



The belladonna invoice covers a multitude of fatal and dangerous imperfections. 

 A very large part of our belladonna root contains poke root, not only an exceedingly 

 active poison but an article that counteracts the medicinal effect of belladonna. It 

 is sometimes difficult to distinguish the smaller roots by macroscopical means, but 

 the dust in the package will always show, under the microscope, the needle-shaped 

 crystals t)f the poke root. The same statement applies to an admixture of poke leaves 

 to belladonna leaves. Scopola leaves are often mixed with and substituted for bella- 

 donna leaves. This is liable to destroy the life of the patient receiving the medicine. 

 In any case the medicinal actions of these two are antagonistic. Some indication of 

 the identity of these plants is almost always present with the leaves; for example, 

 the belladonna has black berries, while the scopola has pale yellow circumscissile 

 pods, and the two can be instantly distinguished. 



A spurious henbane sometimes contains from ten to fifteen times as much alkaloidal 

 matter as the genuine and has a different action. These alkaloids are so poisonous that 

 they are given in doses of only one two-hundred-and-fiftieth to one one-hundredth 

 of a grain. Imagine the effect of giving a dose containing fifteen times as much as 

 it should. When powdered, the spurious can be recognized by its stellate hairs and 

 by certain cells with wavy thick walls. Henbane and digitalis may contain stramo- 

 nium leaves. Any considerable amount of such an addition to digitalis must put 

 the life of the patient in danger, because with heart failure life often depends upon 

 the full and prompt action of the latter remedy. Here the microscope is almost 

 necessary, as a single hair from the leaf of the stramonium, densely covered with 

 minute warts, will tell the story. 



Strophanthus seed is another drug of great service in heart failure, and used when 

 promptness is necessary. There is one variety of the seed which produces no good 

 effect, and there has been ten times as much of this used in the United States as of 

 the other, because it has cost only one-tenth to one-fifth as much. During the past 

 year the use of the spurious kind has been largely stopped. The two seeds have such 

 different macroscopic characteristics that they can not be mistaken when once the 

 difference has been noted. 



So-called saffron is frequently found which consists of marigold flowers, colored 

 red with anilin and heavily weighted with mineral matter. The evil result of this 

 fraud is peculiar. Saffron is largely used for giving an agreeable color to medicinal 

 preparation, so it is added to medicines in a prescription. This mineral matter is 



