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Correspondence. 
( Am  Jour.  Pharm. 
\    February,  1897. 
CORRESPONDENCE  ON  THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  SOME 
GALENICALS  FROM  FLUID  EXTRACTS. 
By  Edward  R.  Souibb,  Charles  Rick  and  John  Uri  Lloyd. 
Brooklyn,  N.  Y.,  January  8,  1897. 
Mr.  L.  F.  Kebler,  Philadelphia. 
Dear  Sir: — Your  favor  of  yesterday  is  received.  I  am  not  in  a 
condition  to  enter  upon  this  discussion,  but  must  confine  myself  to 
my  chief  argument  against  the  general  practice  of  making  tinctures 
from  fluid  extracts ;  and  this  single  argument  has  been  sufficient  to 
control  my  practice  ever  since  fluid  extracts  were  introduced. 
The  objection  to  the  practice  is  that  it  is  not  authorized  by  the 
U.S.P.,  and  that,  therefore,  such  tinctures  are  not  officinal,  but  are 
substituted  for  the  officinal  tinctures. 
To  make  them  so  is  to  break  through  our  own  authority,  or  law, 
as  to  how  they  should  be  made,  and  to  substitute  them  for  the 
U.S. P.  tinctures  is  an  immoral  act  of  dangerous  influence  and  ex- 
ample. 
The  convenience  of  such  a  practice  has  been  known  to  the  suc- 
cessive Committees  of  Revision  ever  since  fluid  extracts  were  ad- 
mitted to  the  U.S. P.,  since  the  practice  antedated  the  admission, 
and  in  some  of  the  committees,  at  least,  it  was  fully  discussed  and 
rejected  by  majority  vote.  A  prominent  reason  for  rejecting  the 
practice  was  that  it  doubled  the  risks  of  quality  in  the  tinctures  so 
made,  and  pushed  the  responsibility  for  quality  back  from  the  dis- 
penser to  some  one  behind.  If  a  dispenser  makes  a  tincture  from  a 
drug,  he  is  bound  to  know,  and  does  know,  whether  it  be  the  offici- 
nal drug  or  not,  and  responsibility  for  the  quality  of  the  tincture  is 
direct  and,  therefore,  right  and  proper.  If  he  makes  his  tincture 
from  a  fluid  extract,  according  to  the  formula  of  the  fluid-extract 
maker,  he  goes  entirely  behind  his  only  legitimate  authority,  the 
U.S.P.,  both  for  material  and  process,  and  supposes  he  avoids  the 
responsibility  for  quality.  If  he  says :  "  I  buy  standardized  fluid 
extracts  because  they  are  better  than  unassayed  drugs,"  he  brings 
the.  practice  to  depend  on  the  standardization,  which  is  still  further 
back  from  the  legitimate  responsibility,  for  then,  who  standardizes 
the  standardizer,  and  who  authorizes  his  assay  process  ? 
When  the  Pharmacopoeia  finds  a  set  of  assay  processes  simple 
