2go 
Progress  of  Pharmacy. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm 
June,  1902. 
In  spite  of  these  precautions  the  same  trouble  would  crop  up  at 
intervals,  and  it  was  not  until  attention  was  drawn  to  the  driving 
belts  that  the  source  of  the  copper  contamination  was  definitely 
located. 
The  various  sections  of  a  driving  belt  are  riveted  with  copper 
rivets  or  stitched  together  with  copper  wire,  and  as  the  leather 
wears  down  from  constant  passage  over  the  pulleys,  the  rivet  heads 
are  gradually  raised  flush  with  the  surface  of  the  belt,  and  are  slowly 
ground  down  by  passing  over  the  pulleys,  minute  particles  and 
sometimes  fair-sized  fragments  of  copper  being  thrown  off  from 
time  to  time. 
The  casual  occurrence  of  the  copper  in  the  powders  is  easily 
explicable  when  the  small  size  of  the  hopper  feeding  the  mill  is 
taken  into  account.  Replacing  the  leather  belt  by  one  made  of 
rubber  has  obviated  further  trouble. 
This  note  is  presented  in  the  hope  that  it  may  save  some  manu- 
facturers from  similar  trouble,  and  prevent  inaccuracies  on  the  part 
of  investigators,  particularly  when  examining  the  constituents  of 
the  ash  of  vegetable  drugs. 
PROGRESS  OF  PHARMACY. 
A  QUARTERLY  REVIEW  OF  SOME  OF  THE  MORE  INTERESTING  ADVANCES 
MADE  IN  PHARMACY  AND  MATERIA  MEDIC  A. 
BY  M.  I.  WlI^BERT, 
Apothecary  at  the  German  Hospital,  Philadelphia. 
Pharmacopoeias. — Several  of  the  European  Pharmacopoeias  are  being 
revised,  but  so  far  none  of  them  have  been  definitely  announced  for 
publication,  and  the  only  advance  that  is  to  be  reported  in  this  con- 
nection is  an  Addendum  to  the  Norwegian  Pharmacopoeia  (third  edi- 
tion, 1895).  This  addendum  includes  a  total  of  twenty-three  titles, 
thirteen  of  these  being  new  drugs,  and  ten  additions  to,  or  altera- 
tions in,  formulas  for  galenical  preparations.  The  new  admissions 
are:  adeps  lanae  cum  aqua,  albumen  ovi  siccum,  chloretum  hydras- 
tinicum,  liquor  ferri  albuminati,  methyl  sulfonalum,  salicylas  natrio- 
theobromicus,  sapo  kalinus,  serum  antidiphthericum,  solutio  acetatis 
kalici,  solutio  subchloreti  ferrici,  subgallas  bismuthicus,  sulfas  fer- 
rosus  siccatus,  tribromphenoias  bismuthicus.  The  changes  in  the 
galenical  preparations  are  largely  in  detail  of  technique  and  are 
comparatively  unimportant.    {Apotheker  Zeitung.) 
