444 
Progress  in  Pharmacy. 
{  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
|  September,  1910. 
Non-official  Remedies  and  endorse  remedies  contained  in  the 
National  Formulary  which  obviously  do  not  comply  with  either 
the  letter  or  the  spirit  of  the  rules  under  which  the  Council  is 
working. 
The  American  Pharmaceutical  Association,  on  the  other  hand, 
through  its  Committee  on  the  National  Formulary,  has  under- 
taken to  supply  a  legitimate  demand  for  authoritative  and  phar- 
maceutically  reliable  formulas  for  preparations  that  may  or  may 
not  have  therapeutic  value. 
The  primary  and,  in  a  way,  the  sole  object  of  these  formulas 
is  to  secure  uniformity  so  that  a  physician  who  chooses  to  use  a 
National  Formulary  preparation,  and  writes  for  it  as  such,  is 
assured  of  securing,  from  reliable  pharmacists,  preparations  that 
are  identical  in  strength  and  composition  no  matter  where  or  by 
whom  they  are  made. 
It  will  readily  be  seen  that  while  the  objects  in  view  in  both 
instances  are  commendable  they  do  not  necessarily  have  much 
in  common. 
The  American  Medical  Association,  through  its  Council  on 
Pharmacy  and  Chemistry,  is  endeavoring  to  educate  physicians  to 
the  future  use  of  acceptedly  reliable  medicaments,  while  the 
American  Pharmaceutical  Association,  through  its  Committee  on 
National  Formulary,  is  attempting  to  supply  pharmaceutically  cor- 
rect formulas  for  preparations  that  are,  by  many  of  the  leading 
medical  practitioners,  no  longer  accepted  as  being  in  harmony 
with  modern  theories  or  practice. 
As  further  illustrating  the  interest  that  is  being  manifested  in 
rational  therapy  it  would  be  desirable  to  call  attention  to  a  number 
of  additional  articles  that  have  been  published  in  medical  journals. 
This  would,  however,  be  space  consuming  and  for  the  present  it 
may  suffice  to  call  attention  to  the  following: 
Pharmacologic  Fetishism. — Under  this  heading  Wilfred  M. 
Barton  discusses  a  dozen  pharmacologic  questions  which  he  desig- 
nates as  delusions,  basing  his  arguments  on  what  appears  to  him 
firm  ground. 
Among  others,  he  points  out  the  futility  of  using  lead  and  opium 
wash  in  sprains,  giving  sparteine  as  a  cardiac  tonic  and  substitute 
for  digitalis,  using  calomel  as  a  cholagogue,  ergot  as  an  internal 
hemostatic,  and  sweet  spirits  of  nitre  as  a  diuretic  or  diaphoretic 
(J.  Am.  M.  Ass.,  1910,  v.  55,  pp.  284-287). 
