368 
VARIETIES. 
it might deceive the examiner (as it did not) it would meet detection in the 
hands of the jobber, who would not fail to claim damages from the importer 
at once. Another mode of evading the law, is by sending sample packages 
to the examining office, or such cases as are known to be all right, and get- 
ting the whole invoice passed by them. This can only be guarded against 
by the examiner being always upon the alert, and where there is the least 
doubt, refusing to pass anything except what he sees and knows to be cor- 
rect as to quality. The facility with which this fraud may be practised, led 
the convention of the Colleges of Pharmacy to recommend that every 
package should be examined ; an opinion, I then and now fully concur in. 
Many similar instancs, both in regard to chemicals, chemical preparations 
and all sorts of crude drugs, might be given, but they have no bearing upon 
the object of this report, only as they point to 'a necessity for the law's 
continuance. 
Another immediate result of the law is the exclusion of damaged drugs. 
Heretofore no state of damage or decay, whether little or much, prevented 
an article, either manufactured or crude, being thrown into market and sold 
for whatever it purported to be, whether calomel half oxydyzed, iodide of 
potassium one-third deliquesced, rhubarb one-half rotten, senna in a similar 
or worse condition from being soaked with salt water — they were each sold 
under their original names, and found their way into the hands of the buyers 
of cheap goods, either in that state or powdered or re-bottled, re-labelled, and 
done up good as new. The importer got his drawback of twenty-five, fifty, 
and seventy per cent, of duty. The insurance company sold the goods and 
paid the difference ; bargain getters purchased : the physician prescribed ; 
the apothecary dealt out, and the patient, suffering under the pains and ills 
of lingering disease, swallowed ; all but the last got their pay, while the 
poor man who bore the unrighteous accumulation of the whole, cursed his 
physician for not understanding his complaint, and perchance turned his 
face to the wall and died. This is no fancy sketch, but true, every word of 
it, and more than once acted out in the drama of every-day life. 
Under the proper construction and administration of the law, all this will 
and is now mostly prevented. It must be evident that any article of medi- 
cine essentially damaged, is not fit to be given to the sick as a remedy. 
This is a very important point, and all examiners should be careful to en- 
force it strictly, regardless of the specious plea of interested insurance com- 
panies or individuals, for any other construction for their general or 
especial benefit or relief. 
In few words then, may be summed up the immediate effects of this law: 
A purer and better class of chemicals and compound preparations, a mate- 
rial improvement in the quality of crude drugs imported, such as gums, 
barks, roots, leaves, and an almost entire exclusion of damaged and decayed 
drugs from our markets. 
These results are, in themselves, sufficient to mark the law as one of great 
value, and to entitle it to a sure claim for perpetuity, and its provisions to 
