AmMa£'Xrm"}     The  Pharmacist  and  the  Pharmacopoeia.  209 
It  was  largely,  if  not  entirely,  due  to  the  direct  efforts  of  Pro- 
fessor Procter,  in  this  direction,  that  the  Pharmacopceial  Revision 
Committee  published  in  1855  the  small  paper  (duodecimo)  edition 
of  the  Pharmacopoeia.  It  was  also  due  to  Professor  Procter's  per- 
sonal solicitation  that  the  convention  for  the  revision  of  the  Pharma- 
copaeia,  in  i860,  fixed  the  price  of  the  coming  Pharmacopoeia  at  the 
really  nominal  price  of  $1.00  a  volume.  But  at  even  this  very  low 
price  it  could  not  be  said  that  the  Pharmacopoeia  was  really  a  pop- 
ular book,  or  that  it  was  generally  used  by  the  retail  pharmacist 
in  his  routine  work. 
To  the  casual  observer  it  would  appear  that  there  was  quite  an 
improvement  in  this  respect,  after  the  publication  of  the  1 870  re- 
vision of  the  Pharmacopoeia,  when  the  new  Pharmacopoeia  was 
actually  to  be  found  on  the  work  table  of  a  large  number  of  retail 
pharmacists.  The  true  reason  for  this  was  not,  however,  to  be 
found  in  any  intrinsic  feature  of  the  Pharmacopoeia,  but  in  the  fact 
that  the  United  States  Dispensatory  had  not  been  held  up  to  the 
very  high  standard  of  excellence  that  had  characterized  the  previous 
revisions  of  that  book.  In  explanation  it  might  be  said  that  Dr. 
Franklin  Bache  had  died  in  1864,  and  that  the  remaining  author, 
Dr.  George  B.  Wood,  had  retired  from  any  active  participation  in 
the  duties  of  his  profession,  and  could  not  be  expected  to  be  suffi- 
ciently in  touch  with  the  advances,  in  the  several  lines,  to  personally 
supervise  so  extensive  a  revision. 
That  pharmacists  had  not  advanced  sufficiently  to  do  without  a 
more  extensive  treatise  on  subjects  relating  to  their  profession  is 
evident  from  the  ready  sale  that  the  first  edition  of  the  National 
Dispensatory  (published  in  1879)  met  with. 
The  first  edition  of  this  work,  said  at  the  time  to  have  been  a 
very  large  one,  was  entirely  sold  out  within  ten  months  of  the  day 
of  issue,  and  the  book  itself  was  out  of  print  for  several  months  be- 
fore a  second  edition  could  be  prepared. 
The  popularity  and  sale  of  the  Dispensatories  was  also  greatly  fav- 
ored by  several  features  peculiar  to  the  Pharmacopoeia  of  1880. 
It  may  be  well  to  review  some  of  these  features  and  the  reasons 
for  their  introduction,  as  they  are  quite  as  important  now  as  they 
were  then. 
For  some  time  prior  to  the  meeting  of  the  Convention,  in  1 880,  it 
had  become  the  custom  of  speaking  of,  or  referring  to,  galenical 
