370 
VARIETIES. 
and pupil within the two past years, than ever before in the same length of 
time in the United States. From these combined sources will continue to 
flow a light that must shine upon and enlighten that ignorance which was 
permitting men to tamper with the life and health of the community. This 
has also had the effect to create a demand for pure medicines. Rhubarb is 
no longer rhubarb unless the quality is such as to commend it to the un- 
fortunate consumer ; and calling a thing by a good name is no longer 
sufficient to redeem it from its lack of curative properties and consequent 
worthlessness. 
Again, the endeavor to come up to the law's standard for chemicals, the 
competition with the imported article, the increasing demand for good me- 
dicines, together with a commendable emulation among our chemists, has 
produced an improvement in this class of goods, sufficiently visible to refute 
all charges of home adulteration because protected from foreign competi- 
tion ; besides this, they are our fellow citizens, within reach of our com- 
plaints, with no intermediate dtaler to shift the blame of impurity to the 
other side of the ocean, and thus wash his innocent hands at our cost. 
With this and the spirit of inquiry as to what we are selling, what we are 
buying, what we are administering, what we are swallowing with hopes of 
relief, that is abroad, no man can long escape detection, exposure and con- 
sequent loss of business, if engaged in the manufacture or sale of spurious 
goods. 
These opinions are the result of the concurrent testimony of the different 
examiners, of various dealers in drugs throughout the country, from whom 
I had before and since my appointment to this commission been in receipt 
of information, and are fully borne out by my own extensive observation in 
almost every State in the Union. 
Without inquiring or pointing out the cause, the testimony to this effect, 
that the quality of drugs in general has improved much within the two past 
years, is almost universal ; and a style of drugs and chemicals, and of me- 
dicinal preparations, may now be found on sale in our great commercial 
emporiums, of a quality and purity never before found, certainly not in the 
United States, and I question if anywhere else. 
These are the results of my observations, both as to the remote and im- 
mediate, or special and general effects of the law. And I feel that the 
friends of the law have great reason to congratulate themselves and the 
community at large, upon the fullest realization of their hopes as to the 
good accruing from these sanitary measures. 
Those who were reaping an iniquitous harvest either through a desire to 
do evil for the purposes of gain (if any such there could have been,) or 
through ignorance of the extent of such evil, must themselves feel that the 
law has worked no wrong to them even though it may have forced them 
into a different channel of trade. The only ones from whom we shall 
hear any complaints while the law is carefully and judiciously executed, or 
