9 
Food and Drugs Act. June 30, 1906, and by a number of state 
laws, as the equal of the Pharmacopoeia of the United States as a 
standard for the medicaments described, the Surgeon-General, with 
the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, agreed to accede to 
this request and to publish the material in a common volume as 
“ Comments on the Pharmacopoeia and National Formulary.” 
As in the comments for the year 1905, embodied in Bulletin No. 49, 
purely commendatory notices have not been included because they 
have little or no value as incentives to research or investigation. 
The value of a compilation of comments on the officially recognized 
standards must be largely in the direction of recognizing shortcom- 
ings to be corrected and errors to be eliminated. 
As an indication of the conditions now existing, it has been thought 
advisable to take cognizance of the reports of state boards of health, 
the committees on adulteration of the several pharmaceutical asso- 
ciations, and of such annual laboratory reports of manufacturing 
concerns and wholesale dealers as were available. These reports, in 
addition to calling attention to the kind of adulteration and substitu- 
tion now in vogue, also go to show the need for constant watchfulness 
on the part of the pharmacist, and the physicians’ imperative need 
of assurance that their sources of supply for medicaments are con- 
trolled in an efficient and honest manner. 
As the work of compiling these comments progresses it becomes 
increasingly evident that the resulting material will be of inestimable 
value as a source of information regarding the correction of stand- 
ards and also, to no less degree, as an indication of the uses, or the 
usefulness of the several articles included in the Pharmacopoeia of 
the United States and the National Formulary. The reports on the 
usefulness of an official article, considered with reference to their 
source and the frequency of their occurrence, should be a valuable 
indication of the right of an article to continued official recognition. 
In this same connection it will no doubt be interesting to learn that 
the abstracts from eclectic and homoeopathic journals indicate that 
many, if not all, of the more important pharmacopoeia! medicaments 
are mentioned quite as frequently in the pages of these journals as in the 
pages of the journals of the so-called regular medical practitioner; 
moreover, there is, in the matter of dosage, no such distinction be- 
tween the several schools as tradition would lead one to expect. 
In reviews of Bulletin 49 it has been suggested that an additional 
use to which these comments on the pharmacopoeia might be put is 
in connection with the teaching of materia medica in medical and 
pharmaceutical colleges. The several bulletins will afford an ex- 
tensive bibliography of official substances, and this feature should be 
of value to teachers of materia medica in keeping their literature up 
to date. 
