9 
sold under a fanciful, registered name at a much higher price than 
under the chemical name. Thus a hardship is worked on pharmacist 
and patient alike . a 
The general principle of using, whenever practicable, the true chem- 
ical name of a substance has been extended to a number of drugs which 
were already official in the U. S. Pharmacopoeia. Thus, Acidum Car- 
bolicum (U. S. P., 1890) (a name no longer approved in chemical ter- 
minology), becomes Phenol / the composition of Salol (U. S. P., 1890) 
is shown by its new official name, Phenylis Salley las, etc. 
The “Extracta Fluida” becomes Fluidextracta; thus these prepara- 
tions are separated alphabetically from the other extracts, and much 
confusion is thereby obviated. 
< 2. Changes in strength . — A number of veiy important changes have 
been made in the strength of certain preparations. “The Inter- 
national Conference for the Unification of the Formulas of Heroic 
Medicines,” held at Brussels in 1902, recommended that certain 
preparations of the heroic remedies be made of uniform strength in the 
pharmacopoeias of the different countries. The present revision of the 
U. S. Pharmacopoeia has accepted nearl} 7 all of the recommendations 
adopted by this conference. The tincture of aconite, for example, is 
reduced from 35 per cent to 10 per cent, the tincture of cantharides 
is increased from 5 per cent to 10 per cent, etc. The great majority 
of tinctures are now of either 10 or 20 per cent strength; the most 
noteworthy of those of the 10 per cent class, besides aconite and can- 
tharides, just mentioned, are those of digitalis, squill, and strophan- 
thus. These changes have been classified and tabulated for this 
bulletin. 
The increase in the scope of pharmacopoeias is an interesting chapter 
in the history of medicine. Before the publication of the first U. S. 
Pharmacopoeia (in 1820) various European pharmacopoeias were the 
chief standards for this country, although the United States Army, 
the Massachusetts Medical Society, and the New York Hospital had 
previous!}^ issued pharmacopoeias of more than local importance. It 
was not until 1861 that there was a national British Pharmacopoeia; 
prior to that year three pharmacopoeias were in use in Great Britain — 
the London, the Edinburgh, and the Dublin. The U. S. Pharmaco- 
poeia, in adopting the suggestions of the Brussels Conference, is the 
first pharmacopoeia to acquire an international scope/ 
a To obviate this unnecessary increase of expense to the patient a Government 
order was recently issued in Germany directing the official physicians to the poor to 
prescribe drugs under their Pharmacopoeial instead of under their registered names. 
6 The growing tendency to give wider recognition to official standards is well 
shown by the fact that, in several States, drugs not in the U. S. Pharmacopoeia are 
deemed adulterated if they do not conform to the standards of purity of foreign 
pharmacopoeias. 
