— 125 — 



point of fennel oil (p. 128) and others, would certainly have been avoided. 

 These have now acquired the force of law for the next decade, and for 

 ten long years to come manufacturers will have to compose themselves 

 to deal with an interminable series of recurrent claims, unless, indeed, a 

 Supplement in which such mistakes are rectified should make its appearance. 

 Even if a public discussion of the draft-scheme had been considered 

 undesirable, competent representatives of the manufacturers concerned might 

 at any rate have been invited to assist in the deliberations of the Pharma- 

 copoeia Commission, seeing that, next to the pharmaceutical profession, 

 the manufacturing industry will chiefly have to bear the injury which 

 results from erroneous indications relating to properties and methods 

 of testing. 



The number of articles connected with our branch of industry in- 

 corporated in the Pharmacopoeia has been increased by one, namely 

 Benzaldehyde. None of the previously official oils has been deleted, but 

 certain substitutions have been made which unfortunately cannot in every 

 case be described as happy. It was certainly a very proper step to discard 

 cassia oil, which has been official up to the present, in favour of Ceylon 

 cinnamon oil, which not only has a much more agreeable odour, but of 

 which it is also easier to guarantee the purity and quality, because this 

 oil is distilled in Germany, whereas cassia oil is exclusively imported 

 from China, where it is frequently adulterated in the grossest possible 

 manner. Nor can the substitution of artificial for natural mustard oil be 

 objected to, seeing that the artificial oil is much the cheaper and that 

 up to the present there is no means of distinguishing analytically between 

 the two oils. But it is much to be regretted that anethol, carvone, and 

 eugenol have been removed and the corresponding oils restored in place 

 thereof. We had rather expected the contrary policy to prevail, and, 

 following the example of other Pharmacopoeias, to see a further step 

 taken on the road already entered upon by the introduction of a greater 

 number of chemically homogeneous bodies, such as cinnamic aldehyde. 

 These bodies have the advantage over their corresponding oils of a uniform 

 character and consequently can be much more easily and stringently tested 

 so far as their quality is concerned. A further reason for the retention 

 of the abovenamed substances in the Pharmacopoeia should have been 

 the fact that they constitute the medicinally valuable portion of the 

 corresponding oils; only, they should not have been incorporated under 

 the names of the oils themselves, as was done in the 4 th Edition of the 

 Arzneibuch, inasmuch as they are by no means identical with the oils, 

 although they form their principal part. Objection may have been taken 

 to them on account of their aroma, but such objection could at most 

 have been warranted in the case of clove oil, which may possibly be 

 preferable to eugenol. It would be quite inapplicable in the case of 

 anethol, and even more so in that of carvone, for both of these have 



