9 
organization requested the cooperation of the Surgeon-General of the 
Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service of the United States in 
the compilation and publication of a u Digest of Comments*' bear- 
ing on the articles official in the U. S. P.. VIII. 
It is in compliance with this request that the following material is 
presented for the consideration of the members of the committee 
of revision of the Pharmacopoeia of the United States, the officers 
of this service, and of such other persons as have manifested or may 
manifest an interest in making the pharmacopoeia and are anxious 
or willing to contribute to the further development and perfecting of 
that book. 
The compilers of the following abstracts have endeavored to gather 
together and to present in an impartial way, and without the addi- 
tion of critical remarks, all comments on the Pharmacopoeia of the 
United States and the several articles contained therein that were 
available in the literature reviewed. Being a compilation of ma- 
terial presented by other authors, the compilers are in no way re- 
sponsible for the opinions expressed, though it should be remembered 
that it is not always practicable, or even possible, to suggest in a 
brief paragraph the content or the exact import or trend of a lengthy, 
comprehensive article, so that, for practical purposes, this digest 
should be considered rather in the nature of a series of suggestions — 
an elaborated index — while for working details it will be advisable 
to consult the original article, so as to avoid possible, though unin- 
tentional, misinterpretations of the author's purpose. It should be 
remembered, too. that while many of the ideas and opinions here 
cited may appear to be positive and based on good authority, still, 
they are not authoritative, and that, until they have been critically 
examined and incorporated in the pharmacopoeia itself, they can 
not in any way be considered as being official. 
It will be remembered that following the enactment of the food 
and drugs act. June 30. 1906. it was found desirable to make a nu m ber 
of changes in the requirements for drugs and chemicals ; these changes 
will be considered in due course, but, for the present, practically all 
of the references bearing more directly on these several changes have 
been omitted as being no longer of interest or necessary. 
For the presentation of the material it was necessary to decide on 
some definite method of procedure, and in view of the varied nature 
of the literature reviewed and the difficulties met with in securing 
access to the several publications, it was decided to compile the 
material chronologically, so as to present the available comments in 
proper sequence. 
Almost without exception the present bulletin deals only with the 
literature of the latter half of 1905. representing the period from the 
publication of the U. S. P.. VIII. to December 31, 1905, though it 
