^™yPi9?om-}       Pharmacognosy  and  the  US.P.  57 
PHARMACOGNOSY  AND  COMMERCIAL  DRUGS. 
It  appears  to  me  to  be  unfortunate  that  the  Committee  on  Drug 
Market  of  the  A.  Ph.  A.,  representing  as  it  does  an  association  com- 
posed of  the  leaders  in  education  and  the  scientific  workers  in 
pharmacy  in  this  country,  should  have  presented  at  the  last  annual 
meeting  a  report  which  tends  to  throw  discredit  upon  practical  or 
applied  pharmacognosy  in  this  country.  This  is  the  more  to  be 
deplored  because  of  the  fact  that  the  Committee  on  Drug  Market  of 
the  National  Wholesale  Druggists'  Association  incorporated  the 
findings  of  the  A.  Ph.  A.  committee  in  its  report  presented  at  the 
Richmond  meeting  and  also  because  the  report  has  been  commented 
upon  and  considered  to  represent  an  actual  condition.  The  N.  W. 
D.  A.  Committee  cannot  of  course  be  blamed  for  accepting  the 
findings  of  a  committee  of  our  leading  scientific  association.  While 
I  do  not  know  who  the  experts  were  to  whom  specimens  were  sub- 
mitted by  the  A.  Ph.  A.  committee,  I  may  say  that  I  have  in  mind  a 
recent  graduate  of  a  college  of  pharmacy  who  was  able  to  take  a 
drug  like  the  one  reported  on  by  the  A.  Ph.  A.  committee  and  quan- 
titatively separate  the  component  drugs  of  the  mixture.  I  do  not 
mean  to  imply  that  this  is  a  piece  of  ofif-hand  work,  but  that  it 
requires  a  certain  amount  of  knowledge,  training,  and  some  pa- 
tience ;  but  on  the  other  hand  I  do  want  to  state  that  any  one  claim- 
ing to  be  trained  in  applied  pharmacognosy  should  be  able  readily 
to  make  a  differentiation  of  the  component  drugs  of  such  a  mixture 
as  is  referred  to  in  the  report  of  the  committee  of  the  A.  Ph.  A., 
and,  furthermore,  that  the  condition  of  the  drug  market  creates  the 
necessity  for  work  of  this  kind.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  questions  of 
this  kind  arise  daily  in  the  drug  market,  and  it  behooves  us  to 
frame  the  Pharmacopoeia  in  such  a  manner  as  to  make  it  a  valuable 
aid  and  guide  in  this  practical  and  all-important  work,  and  warrants 
us  in  looking  to  the  colleges  of  pharmacy  to  train  their  students  in 
such  a  manner  as  to  enable  them  to  be  useful  in  this  particular  field. 
Such  a  report  as  that  of  the  A.  Ph.  A.  committee  tends  to  hinder 
progress  in  that  it  leads  importers  and  dealers  to  think  that  there 
is  no  way  out  of  their  difficulties,  and,  what  is  still  more  deplorable, 
leads  those  who  engage  in  fraudulent  practices  to  feel  that  there 
are  probabilities  that  their  practices  will  not  be  detected.  Again, 
such  reports  tend  to  minimize  the  importance  of  the  question  in  the 
eyes  of  dealers,  and  finally  to  cause  delays  in  the  progress  of  the 
sciences  of  both  pharmacy  and  medicine. 
