94  American  Pharmaceutical  Association.  {AFebruaryTiw)r8m' 
notice  shall  be  printed  in  three  successive  issues  of  the  Weekly 
Roster  of  the  medical  organizations  of  Philadelphia." 
The  foregoing  action,  adopted  at  the  annual  meeting  on  January 
15th,  means  expulsion  for  offenders  from  the  County  Society,  the 
State  Society  and  the  American  Medical  Association,  after  expira- 
tion of  the  three  notices  mentioned. 
THE  PHILADELPHIA  BRANCH  OF  THE  AMERICAN 
PHARMACEUTICAL  ASSOCIATION. 
The  stated  meeting  of  the  Philadelphia  Branch  of  the  American 
Pharmaceutical  Association,  for  January,  was  devoted  to  a  discussion 
of  the  valuation  of  drugs  and  assay  processes.  The  meeting  was  an 
unusually  interesting  one  and  demonstrated,  more  than  any  of  the 
previous  meetings,  the  imperative  need  for  post  graduate  work  on 
the  part  of  retail  pharmacists,  if  they  wish  to  keep  abreast  of  the 
needs  and  requirements  of  the  science  of  pharmacy  to-day. 
The  first  paper  was  one  contributed  by  Professor  W.  A.  Puckner, 
of  Chicago,  entitled  :  "Recent  Progress  in  the  Chemistry  of  Alkaloid 
Estimation."  This  paper  included  quite  a  comprehensive  review  of 
the  progress  that  has  been  made  during  the  past  twenty  years  in 
the  quantitative  estimation  of  alkaloids  in  crude  drugs. 
A  paper  by  Mr.  W.  A.  Pearson  on  :  "  The  Pharmacopoeia  from 
the  View  Point  of  a  Scientific  Worker,"  included  a  number  of  sug- 
gestions for  the  elaboration  or  modification  of  the  tests  for  official 
articles. 
Mr.  Pearson  also  pointed  out  the  need  for  adopting  physiological 
standards  and  tests  for  such  drugs  as  aconite,  colchicum,  digitalis, 
ergot,  thyroid  gland  and  suprarenal  gland. 
A  joint  paper  by  Dr.  E.  D.  Reed  and  Mr.  Charles  E.  Vankerkleed 
on :  "  The  Standardization  of  the  Preparations  of  Digitalis  by 
Physiological  and  Chemical  Means,"  brought  out  a  number  of 
interesting  facts  relating  to  the  possibilities  of  adopting  standards 
for  this  really  important  drug.  The  work  done  by  Dr.  Reed  and 
Mr.  Vankerkleed  shows  that  there  is  a  remarkable  uniformity 
between  the  results  obtained  by  physiological  tests  and  the  quanti- 
tative determination  of  the  contained  digitoxin  by  chemical  means. 
The  results  so  far  obtained  it  was  thought  would  warrant  the  con- 
tinuation of  the  belief  that  digitoxin  represents  fairly  well  the  active 
constituents  of  digitalis. 
