308 
International  Standards. 
J  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
}       July,  1910. 
As  has  been  pointed  out  repeatedly  these  congresses  were  in- 
ternational only  in  name,  they  were  never  well  attended  and  the 
discussions  and  resolutions  were  futile  because  of  their  being  alto- 
gether too  comprehensive. 
At  the  ninth  International  Pharmacopoeial  Congress,  held  in 
Paris  in  1900,  Professor  A.  Tschirch,  of  Berne,  reviewed  the  efforts 
that  had  been  made  to  develop  an  agreement  to  secure  greater 
uniformity  in  the  strength  and  nomenclature  of  widely  used  medi- 
cines and  pointed  out  that  the  several  congresses  had  proven  to  be 
impotent  because  they  lacked  the  official  standing  that  was  neces- 
sary to  make  their  conclusions  effective. 
He  proposed  that  the  ninth  International  Congress  request  the 
Belgian  Government  to  arrange  with  other  governments  for  a 
conference  in  Brussels,  and  to  ask  that  all  of  the  delegates  appointed 
to  attend  such  a  conference  have  their  proposals  ready  to  lay  before 
the  meeting  whenever  this  may  be  called.  It  was  also  suggested 
that  the  conference  be  restricted,  to  the  discussion  of  the  name  and 
strength  of  widely  used  potent  medicaments. 
The  delegates  appointed  by  their  respective  governments  to 
attend  this  International  Conference  for  the  Unification  of  Pharma- 
copoeial Formulae  for  Potent  Medicaments  met  in  Brussels,  Septem- 
ber 15,  1902.  The  conference  included  delegates  from  the  United 
States  and  from  18  European  countries.  . 
After  fully  discussing  a  variety  of  propositions  the  conclusions 
were  finally  embodied  in  the  form  of  a  protocol  designating  the 
nomenclature,  strength  and  method  of  preparing  the  several 
medicaments. 
This  protocol  was  subscribed  to  by  the  delegates  present  and 
these  signatures  were  subsequently  ratified  by  the  Diplomatic  Repre- 
sentatives of  the  several  governments,  thus  giving  to  this  agreement 
the  status  of  an  international  treaty. 
For  men  who  are  really  interested  in  the  progress  of  medicine, 
the  unanimity  with  which  the  provisions  of  the  Brussels  protocol 
have  been  embodied  in  the  several  national  pharmacopoeias  has  been 
a  revelation  as  well  as  an  inspiration. 
For  nearly  a  century  it  had  been  asserted  that  international  uni- 
formity in  pharmaceutical  preparations  was  impractical  and  that  the 
several  nations  could  never  be  induced  to  accept  for  inclusion  in  their 
pharmacopoeias  the  dictates  of  outside  influences.  The  futility  of 
these  assertions  is  amply  demonstrated  by  the  fact  that  within  a 
