1 84 
Book  Reviews. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
April,  1908. 
authority  of  some  statutory  body,  and  the  book  is  the  direct  out- 
come of  a  resolution  adopted  by  the  Council  of  the  Pharmaceutical 
Society  on  November  4,  1903. 
The  production  of  the  Codex  was  entrusted  to  a  committee  con- 
sisting of  Messrs.  Michael  Carteighe,  C.  B.  Allen,  S.  R.  Atkins, 
J.  F.  Harrington,  G.  T.  W.  Newsholme,  R.  A.  Robinson,  and 
J.  Rymer  Young,  This  committee  subsequently  deputed  the  labor  of 
compiling  the  information  to  a  sub-committee  consisting  of  Dr. 
W.  E.  Dixon,  Prof.  H.  G.  Greenish,  and  Messrs.  Edmund  White, 
W.  F.  Gulliver,  F.  W.  Gambei,  and  John  Humphrey,  the  latter  acting 
as  secretary. 
That  this  committee  has  devoted  much  arduous  labor  to  the  solu- 
tion of  the  problems  that  presented  themselves  will  be  admitted  by 
all  who  are  sufficiently  interested  in  pharmacy  to  become  more  fully 
acquainted  with  the  book  itself.  To  the  credit  of  the  Pharmaceu- 
tical Society  it  should  be  said  that  much  of  the  work  was  done  in 
the  research  laboratory  of  that  Society,  though  much  of  it  was  vol- 
untarily undertaken  by  individual  members  of  the  Society  and 
others  interested  in  the  development  of  the  book. 
The  direct  object  of  the  Codex  is  to  give  English  pharmacists 
and  physicians  information  regarding  all  medicines  and  medicinal 
preparations  that  are  at  all  popular  throughout  the  wide  extent  of 
the  British  Empire.  In  addition  to  embodying  the  whole  of  the 
British  Pharmacopoeia  the  book  also  includes  much  information  con- 
cerning articles  that  are  official  in  France,  Germany  and  the  United 
States,  and  it  also  contains  many  formulas  for  preparations  having 
a  more  or  less  local  repute. 
The  monographs  and  formulae  are  arranged  alphabetically  and 
the  style  of  the  descriptive  material  is  similar  to  that  followed  in 
modern  pharmacopoeias. 
The  descriptions  of  crude  drugs,  for  instance,  include  references  to 
name,  species,  source,  collection,  production  and  preparation  of  the 
drug  followed  by  a  clear,  though  somewhat  popular,  description 
that  not  infrequently  includes  anatomical  and  chemical  information. 
The  microscopic  structure  of  important  drugs  is  usually  described 
at  some  length,  and  in  many  cases  attention  is  specifically  directed 
to  the  kinds  of  cells  and  cell  contents  that  are  not  found  in  the 
drug,  and  are,  therefore,  indicative  of  adulteration  or  sophistication. 
The  monographs  of  chemical  substances  are  also  quite  compre- 
