THE 
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACY. 
APRIL, 1846. 
ART. I.— REMARKS ON THE REVISION OF THE PHARMA- 
COPOEIA. 
By William Procter 3 Jr. 
Previous to the year 1820 the medical profession in the 
United States had no authorized pharmaceutical guide, 
and the apothecaries no generally recognized standard for 
the preparation of medicines. The Pharmacopoeias of the 
British Colleges were more looked to than perhaps any 
other, and the fact that these works varied in many par- 
ticulars in the strength of medicines, and their mode of 
preparation, aided by the adoption of the one or the other 
of them in different localities, or by different individuals in 
the same place, gave to the pharmacy of this country, prior 
to the period stated, an irregularity and uncertainty hardly 
now to be appreciated, and it is to be hoped never to be 
again realized. As the medical community of Great Britain 
are beginning to perceive the impropriety of having three 
guide books for the apothecary within limits so contracted, 
they will doubtless, ere long, by the adoption of a National 
Pharmacopoeia, avoid the reproach, of which the existence of 
strong local prejudices have rendered them deserving, and 
have an uniform standard for their pharmaceutical pre- 
parations. 
VOL. XII. — no, i. 1 
