THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY 
JULY,  ipio 
INTERNATIONAL  STANDARDS— THE  DESIRABILITY  OF 
DEVELOPING  INTERNATIONAL  UNIFORMITY 
IN  NOMENCLATURE  AND  STRENGTH  OF 
WIDELY  USED  MEDICINES* 
By  M.  L  Wilbert. 
Hygienic  Laboratory — U.  S.  Public  Health  and  Marine-Hospital  Service. 
For  many  decades  the  better  informed  men  in  pharmacy  as  well 
as  medicine  have  endeavored  to  create  more  widespread  interest  in 
the  need  for  generally  acceptable  uniform  names  and  standards  of 
strength  for  medicinal  preparations. 
This  need  for  universal  standards,  first  recognized  in  the  early 
years  of  the  nineteenth  century,  was  more  fully  appreciated  when 
steam  and.  electricity  began  to  annihilate  space  and  time  so  that  the 
previously  formidable  obstacle  of  distance  no  longer  sufficed  to  keep 
the  people  of  different  countries  from  intermingling. 
It  was  pointed  out  at  a  very  early  period  that  the  lack  of  uni- 
formity in  nomenclature  and  standards  of  strength  for  pharma- 
ceutical preparations  constitutes  a  real  source  of  danger  to  the 
traveller,  but  it  was  soon  recognized  that  the  direct  danger  to  the 
individual  is  of  much  less  import  than  the  indirect  effect  on  the 
progress  of  the  sciences  of  medicine. 
This  indirect  effect  has  evidenced  itself  in  many  ways,  not  the 
least  important  of  which  has  been  the  hindrance  that  the  evident 
wariation  in  name  and  strength  of  pharmaceutical  preparations  has 
been  to  the  development  of  a  rational  materia  medica  and  the  in- 
*  Prepared  for  the  Congress  on  Hygiene  and  Medicine,  held  in  the  City 
of  Buenos  Ayres,  Argentine,  May,  1910. 
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