8 
United States Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service.” (IT. S. 
P., VIII, p. 393.) 
The publication of the U. S. P., VIII, in July, 1905, followed as 
it was by the passage of the food and drugs act of June 30, 1906, has 
served to attract attention to the contents and the provisions of the 
former in a way that was quite unexpected, even by the members of 
the committee of revision of the Pharmacopoeia of the United States. 
This, at the time unforseen, development has served the twofold 
purpose of interesting a much larger number of individuals in the 
pharmacopoeia, and of eliciting a much greater number of comments 
and criticisms on its contents than has ever before been forthcoming. 
It has long been appreciated that proper recognition should be 
given to all forms of comments and criticisms in the development of 
the pharmacopoeia, and for more than a quarter of a century the 
committee of revision of the pharmacopoeia, or the chairman of that 
committee, has been instrumental in collecting and considering the 
criticisms offered in current medical and pharmaceutical literature. 
So far as is known the origin of compilations of this kind is to be 
attributed to the late Charles Rice, who, as chairman of the committee 
of revision of the Pharmacopoeia of the United States in 1883, began 
to collect notes and abstracts taken from the medical and pharmaceu- 
tical literature of this country and Europe with the view of forming 
a digest of criticisms for the use of future members of the revision 
committee of the U. S. P. 
In the introduction to Part 1 of this Digest of Criticisms, Charles 
Rice points out that it would be necessary for the revision committee 
of the pharmacopoeia to have access to a comprehensive compilation 
of the criticisms on the pharmacopoeia and the substances related 
to it, if they were expected to reflect accurately the practices of the 
time and the requirements of medical practitioners in the result- 
ing book. 
He also points out the difficulties that beset the compiler of ma- 
terial of this kind and considered himself as particularly fortunate in 
being able to secure the services of the late Hans M. Wilder, of 
Philadelphia, to devote all of his time to the compilation of the 
material for the first five parts of the six so far published of the 
“ Digest of Criticisms on the United States Pharmacopoeia.” 
These digests of criticisms were published by the committee of 
revision of the Pharmacopoeia of the United States for gratuitous 
distribution to such persons as were particularly interested in the 
revision of the pharmacopoeia or who might be able to assist in the 
perfecting of that book. Because of the widespread and growing 
interest in the U. S. P., VIII, and because of the official connection 
of the Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service with the United 
States Pharmacopoeial Convention, the board of trustees of the latter 
