13 
there can be no compromise. The physician should never forget that 
he is the sole judge of what is suitable for his patient.^' 
Not onl}^ does the individual patient often suffer, but* real progress 
in therapeutics is delayed bv the use of remedies as to the composition 
of vdiich the physician has but imperfectly informed himself; in many 
cases were the real nature of the drug made known the physician 
would see the folly of using it. The mythical character of the virtues 
claimed for some ‘’special combinations'- has been repeatedly shown 
by chemical analysis.^ Thus some of the remedies advertised to phy- 
sicians under fanciful names, with veiw vague descriptions of their 
composition but with full directions for use, have been shown to be 
nothing but mixtures of some of the best-known U. S. Pharmacopoeia 
drugs. 
The Pharmacopoeia is often criticised for retaining and admitting 
drugs which many physicians regard as useless. It should be remem- 
bered, however, that the Pharmacopoeia is (and under our form of 
government must be) representative, as well as conservative; the 
framers endeavor to make it reflect the actual demands of the medical 
profession.^ 
o That the assurances as to the virtues of secret or semi-secret preparations, although 
made in good faith and supported by high authority, are not a sufficient safeguard 
against dangerous accidents, is illustrated by the following case: Some manufacturers 
who prepared certain tinctures with methyl alcohol attempted to justify their 
departure from recognized pharmaceutical methods by claiming that methyl alcohol 
is a better solvent of some of the constituents of ginger than is ethyl alcohol, and 
this claim, as well as the contention that methyl alcohol is not more toxic than 
ethyl alcohol, was supported in court by the testimony of high official chemists; the 
plaintiff in the case in question (a physician whose sight was destroyed by the 
methyl alcohol) thought when he bought this preparation that he was buying an 
article made according to the Pharmacopoeia. 
b See, for example, the reports of the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry of the 
American Medical Association. 
The scope of the Pharmacopoeia is well described in the following words of H. C. 
Wood, President of the U. S. Pharmacopoeial Convention (Pop. Sci. ^Monthly, Jan., 
1905, p. 279): 
“A common, fallacious belief is that Pharmacopoeial recognition means that the 
drug recognized is of value; the fact is that the United States and othet Pharmaco- 
poeias have in them numerous drugs of very little use. The nature or motif, so to 
speak, of a Pharmacopoeia is not to distinguish between worthy and worthless drugs, 
but to see that a drug which is asked for is, as sold by the apothecary, pure, and 
that proper preparations of uniform strength are made by the apothecary. 
“The question which the framers of a Pharmacopoeia ask themselves is not. Is this 
drug of value, but Is there a demand for it by the profession of medicine? If five 
thousand doctors in the United States believed brick dust to be a valuable remedy 
and habitually used it, brick dust would have to go into the Pharmacopoeia. Witch- 
hazel is probably as active and as useful as is brick dust, but witch-hazel is a fad 
and is enormously called for, and so witch-hazel must go into the Pharmacopoeia. 
The Pharmacopoeia exists for the purpose of requiring tlie apothecary to give, in the 
first place, pure brick dust or pure witch-hazel when asked for; and, in the second 
place, uniform preparations of these remedies.” 
