566 TESTS FOR IMPORTANT MEDICINAL PREPARATIONS. 
riorate and debase the quality of manufactured products than 
that which deals in medicinal substances ; and there is none 
■where the interests of the consumer are more remotely con- 
sidered in manufacturing, or where these interests are so 
difficult to guard and protect ; whilst there is assuredly no 
branch whose operations and productions are of more vital 
importance to the community and the profession of medicine* 
An important collateral effect of this debasement of medi- 
cinal substances, which does not receive due consideration in 
the profession generally, is that the effects of the uncertainty 
and bad quality of these substances are transmitted directly 
to the practice of medicine, and in failing to fulfil the indica- 
tions to their use, they not only bring distrust and discredit 
upon both the science and art of medicine, but also tend 
directly to fester and uphold the quackeries and nostrums of 
the day, in many ways. 
^ % 
Another fertile source of bad and imperfect medicinal sub- 
stances lies in the use, in manufacturing, of cheap substitutes 
and by-products, and in utilising residues for improper pur- 
poses, so that through many ways the tendency is constantly 
increasing whereby the science of medicine is subsidised and 
radically injured by the debasement of the agents upon which 
the success of the art of medicine so much depends. 
The check or remedy for this evil tendency rests entirely 
and only with the profession, and may be found in various 
ways, but in no way more easily or more certainly, for such 
substances as admit of it, than in the application of simple 
and reliable tests. 
^ ^ ^ ^ 
These tests require little time, skill, or apparatus, and are 
adapted to the extemporaneous use of the physician or 
apothecary, so that they may be conveniently applied at the 
dispensary-counter or upon the office-table. They conse- 
quently do not aim at critical accuracy, but at the more 
important point of practical discrimination. 
A very important general indication of quality in medicinal 
substances is the source from whence they come, and the 
channels through which they may have passed. 
* * * * * 5{C 
A very large proportion of medicinal substances must 
depend mainly upon some such evidences of quality until 
their therapeutic value is determined in practice, since they 
are beyond the easy reach of chemistry, and since sensible 
properties are so often deceptive. Among those which are 
