8 
It is probably true that with a pharmacopoeia owned and controlled, 
as the Pharmacopoeia of the United States is, by representatives of 
the professions more directly interested, the government of the coun- 
try could exercise its influence in no better way than by the collection 
and publication of facts bearing on the need for taking cognizance 
of practices in foreign countries and the desirability of bringing our 
own standards into harmony with generally accepted standards in 
other portions of the world. 
The same reasoning would appear to hold good, so far as the need 
for improving the Pharmacopoeia and the Xational Formulary as 
standards under The Food and Drugs Act, June 30. 1906, is con- 
cerned. For this purpose it must appear evident that the conven- 
tion, and through it the Committee of Revision of the Pharmaco- 
poeia, should bear in mind the need of efficient and active medicaments 
for the conservation of the public health, without losing sight of the 
desirability of equitable standards from an economic point of view. 
Few features of national pharmacopoeias are more irksome to the 
student or more likely to mislead the medical practitioner than varia- 
tions in official nomenclature, and the possibility that the same title 
may be applied to widely different substances. As pointed out in the 
abstracts under the heading “ Xomenclature,’* on page 31, this has 
attracted considerable attention abroad, and those who are familiar 
with the early editions of the Pharmacopoeia of the United States 
will recall that some of the earlier revision committees also paid con- 
siderable attention to this subject. 
The present-day catholicity of medical literature and the rapidity 
with which medical discoveries become public property would serve 
to indicate that some concerted attempt should be made to correct 
existing abuses in connection with the variability of the Latin titles 
of official articles. 
At the meeting of the American Pharmaceutical Association in 
Hot Springs, Ark., Se^Tember 7 to 12, 1908, the following resolution 
was adopted : 
Resolved , That the Council of the American Pharmaceutical Association 
request the Surgeon-General of the United States Public Health and Marine- 
Hospital Service to include in the Digest of Comments on the United States 
Pharmacopoeia, now under way, a report of “ Comments on the Xational Formu- 
lary ” and that the general secretary be requested to send Surgeon-General 
Wyman a copy of this resolution. 
In view of the fact that the Hygienic Laboratory of the Public 
Health and Marine-Hospital Service is by law charged with the 
study of matters relating to public health, and the acknowledged im- 
portance of medicaments in the prevention and cure of diseases, and 
in view of the fact that the Xational Formulary is recognized, by The 
