I 
\ VARIETIES. 367 
If our Colleges of Pharmacy in the different cities, as I have no doubt 
they will, continue to thus watch the articles offered them and the public, 
and act with the independence that has characterised them thus far, no 
deception of this kind will go long unexposed, and it will soon cease alto- 
gether. 
No manufactured article, susceptible of adulteration, ought ever to be 
suffered to pass by the Examiner of drugs without being sampled and tested 
by analysis, and no matter what its appearances or what its label ; neither 
the one nor the other are guarantees of its purity, for both may alike be 
counterfeits. The more popular the maker, the higher his name and repu- 
tation, the more likely his name, label, bottle and article to be counter- 
feited, as has Pelletier's name to the article quinine, others to iodide of 
potassium, &c. &c. 
Secondly. The effects of the law upon crude drugs and medicines, such 
as leaves, barks, roots, gums, gum resins, &c. Upon these articles the effect 
has been the same as upon chemicals and compound goods. Greater varia- 
tions must of course occur in their qualities, as many of them cannot be 
tested with accuracy ; and of the rest, very imperfect standards are to be 
found in any of the works on pharmacy or materia medica now extant. 
This was heretofore left entirely in the hands of the examiner at each port, 
who has been obliged to fix his own standards when there were none laid 
down in the works referred to in the instructions of the department. Such 
has been the case with many of our most valuable and important articles of 
crude drugs, gums, and gum resins, — such as opium, scammony, &c. Such 
also has been the case with many of the roots and barks, as rhubarb and 
cinchona and all its varieties. One may have fixed upon five per cent, 
of morphine, and another upon eight, another ten, as the standard for 
opium. Again, the same might occur in admitting or rejecting scammony. 
One requiring sixty or seventy per cent, of resin, another admitting or re- 
jecting, merely from the physical appearance of the article. 
So again with regard to barks, especially the cinchonas — one refusing to 
admit any except the true medicinal article ; another admitting Maracaibo 
and other false barks usually sold in market as pale bark, or used to adul- 
terate that article. But, upon the whole class of crude drugs, the effect has 
been highly beneficial. Greater care is taken in their selection and prepa - 
ration for market, and a vast quantity of many kinds of barks and roots 
heretofore finding daily their way into market, either in their simple worth- 
lessness or mixed with purer and different articles, are now scarcely, if ever 
found ; and if seen they are about the last of their kind. Now and then, an 
article may get through our ports, by some adroit means of deception, or be 
slipped in at a port where there is no examiner, but this must be but 
seldom. But recently, in New York, I saw several casks of gum guaiac, the 
heads of which, for about six inches, were filled with a fair article, while 
the remaining portion of the cask was made up of the vilest trash imagina- 
ble. This is but a shallow trick that could not be often repeated, for though 
