498 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



and any adulteration of it must be projDortionally injurious, and 

 sometimes even fatal. You know it is generally used in cholera 

 cases, but especially in cases of delirium tremens it is adminis- 

 tered to the extent of many grains per diem; and it is essential, 

 in such cases, that the opium should be pure. If you were to 

 employ opium largely adulterated, the consequence in many .cases 

 would be, that you would lose your patient. Now I say without 

 the fear of contradiction, that medical men run great risk in the 

 administration of opium, if they make an allowance for what may 

 be called an average amount of adulteration, they would be liable 

 to kill by administering over-doses, if the dose happened to con- 

 sist of genuine opium. They would incur that risk certainly; 

 they know not how to calculate with certainty upon the eifect of 

 a given quantity of any remedy, where that remedy is subject to 

 an uncertain amount of adulteration. All adulterations of drugs 

 may be divided into two classes; the adulterations which are 

 practiced on those drugs before they reach tlie countr}^, and the 

 adulteration which they experience after their arrival. Therefore 

 the whole matter resolves itself in this, that you cannot insure 

 obtaining a genuine drag from any seller of drugs, because he 

 cannot answer for what may have been done Avith the drugs be- 

 fore they reach his hands. Drugs are unfortunately subject to 

 three sets of adulterations; one to which foreign drugs are ex- 

 posed to abroad ; then they are sent by the wholesale druggist to 

 the drug grinder, whose business it is to reduce them to powder, 

 in the process of grinding, a part of the moisture which all vege- 

 table substances contain escapes, this loss must be made up by 

 him by adulteration, as the matter must be returned of its full 

 previous weight; third, the retailer may increase his profits, if he 

 chooses to be dishonest enough by final adulteration. 



The last drug I will mention is scaramony. The conclusions 

 deducible from the examination of thirty specimens of this drug 

 were these; that out of the thirteen samples of scanomony as im- 

 ported, one only w^as genuine, it yielding seventy-nine per cent 

 of resin, the active principle; that eleven of the samples were 

 more or less adulterated, the amount varying between eight and 

 seventy-five per cent, and the proportion of resin was in some as 

 low as fourteen per cent; that one sample was entirely factitious, 

 being composed of the resins of guaiacum and jalap, with woody 

 fibre, cellular tissue, and other insoluble matter; that the adulte- 

 rating ingredients detected in most of the other samples consisted 

 for the most part of impure carbonate of lime or chalk, wheat 



