AMERICAN  PHARMACEUTICAL  ASSOCIATION. 
499 
of  three  or  four  years,  it  has  not  been  found  to  work  well.  The  office  of  Special  Ex- 
aminer is  placed  in  the  hands  of  persons  unfitted  by  education  and  previous  pur- 
suits to  execute  so  important  a  trust.  He  urged  that  physicians  were  less 
qualified  than  practical  druggists  for  the  station.  They  were  not  educated  for 
that  purpose.  They  often  could  not  tell  good  from  bad  jalap.  The  office  had 
become  too  political — a  bad  feature — and  a  good  argument  against  the  law.  He 
reviewed  the  late  instructions  from  the  Treasury  Department  to  the  Special  Ex- 
aminers and  pointed  out  its  defects.  He  would  rather  trust  to  his  eye-sight  to 
tell  the  quality  of  many  articles,  such  as  aloes,  senna,  rhubarb,  &c,  than  any 
estimate  founded  on  the  standards  given.  The  specific  gravity  of  the  Essential 
oils  is  no  criterion  of  their  purity  in  a  majority  of  cases.  The  idea  that  the  value 
of  Peruvian  barks  depended  solely  upon  the  amount  of  alkaloids  they  contain  was 
combatted,  and  the  doctrine  maintained  that  all  medicinal  barks  have  their  pecu- 
liar uses,  and  all  should  be  allowed  to  enter  our  ports  if  good  of  their  kind. 
Mr.  Colcord,  of  Boston,  was  pleased  withmany  points  in  the  report  of  the  Com- 
mittee, but  was  not  prepared  to  adopt  it  as  a  whole.  The  resolution  under  con- 
sideration was  embraced  in  the  report,  but  he  could  not  vote*for  it.  In  illustra- 
tion he  said  that  he  liked  mackerel  if  No.  1,  and  good  of  its  kind,  but  he  would 
as  soon  eat  No.  3  mackerel  as  to  vote  for  this  resolution. 
Mr.  Fish,  of  Connecticut,  observed  that  he  also  liked  No.  1  mackerel,  but  he 
had  eaten  No.  3,  and  was  willing  to  allow  any  one  the  same  privilege,  even 
though  it  might  not  be  considered  good  of  its  kind.  In  reference  to  Cinchona 
bark  he  wished  to  say  that  during  an  experience  of  26  years  in  the  drug  trade  he 
had  found  Maracaibo  bark  to  meet  the  wants  of  a  great  majority  of  the  people  in 
his  section  of  the  country.  During  the  prevalence  of  the  spotted  fever  as  an  ep- 
idemic in  the  valley  of  the  Connecticut,  in  the  years  1803,  '4,  and  '12  and  '13  the 
medical  profession  relied  entirely  upon  that  bark,  and  fought  successfully  that 
dire  disease  with  it;  and  it  was  not  until  a  later  period  that  any  of  the  officinal 
barks  came  into  use,  which  were  of  course  found  preferable.  That  bark  still 
holds  its  place,  and  forms  nine-tenths  of  the  consumption  of  the  people,  and  is  in 
a  majority  of  cases  preferred.  He  regarded  a  strict  construction  of  the  law,  in 
the  manner  advocated  by  the  opponents  of  this  resolution,  as  an  actual  prohibi- 
tion of  many  valuable  remedies.  Under  it  nitrate  of  potassa  was  inadmissible, 
as  well  as  any  bark  non-oficinal.  He  coincided  with  Mr.  Merrick  in  his  views  re- 
garding the  law,  and  now  desired  to  pursue  such  a  course,  as  to  render  its  opera- 
tion less  objectionable. 
Mr.  Fish  believed  the  intent  of  the  law  was  simply  to  exclude  adulterated  or 
deteriorated  drugs,  but  was  not  applicable  to  any  article  in  its  natural  state  that 
possessed  remedial  powers.  He  conceived  that  the' Examiners  had  asumed  judicial 
powers,  and  undertaken  to  decide  upon  what  should  and  what  should  not  be  admit- 
ted, without  regard  to  quality, upon  grounds  wholly  inapplicable,  as  had  been  illus- 
trated recently  in  Philadelphia.  He  did  not  believe  that  a  bark  to  possess 
remedial  powers  (  as  a  febrifuge)  should  of  necessity  contain  quinine. — The  false 
Au^ustura  (  Strychnos-pseudo  quina)  was  the  most  valuable  antiperiodic  known, 
but  contained  not  a  particle  of  that  alkaloid.  In  conclusion,  Mr.  Fish  regarded 
the  present  operation  of  the  law  as  retrograding  ra'her  than  advancing,  and 
earnestly  hoped  that  a  more  liberal  spirit  would  finally  prevail. 
Dr.  Guthrie  replied  to  the  argumenis  urged  for  the  adoption  of  this  clause  of  the 
report;  reviewing  the  causes  which  led  to  the  enactment  of  the  law  of  1818;- 
giving  a  sketch  of  the  state  o'  the  drug  trade  in  the  West  and  South  before  that 
law,  and  its  present  condition.  He  urged  that  the  Association  should  take  a  hi^h 
and  consistent  stand  in  this  matter  as  having  an  important  bearing  on  its  future 
usefulness  to  the  profession  of  Pharmacy  in  the  United  States,  and  upon  the 
medical  profession,  as  well  as  its  importance  to  the  community  at  large.  He  urged 
that  the  American  Pharmaceutical  Association  stand  as  the  representatives  of 
the  body  of  Pharmaceutists  and  Druggists,  and  that  these  as  curators  and  con- 
servators of  the  public  health  are  looked  to  by  the  community,  that  every  article 
dispensed  by  them  be  not  only  "  good  of  its  kind,"  but  that  the  kind  be  good,  and 
not  only^ood  but  the  best.  Medicines  are  at  best  hard  to  take,  and  we  should 
offer  such  only  as  will  produce  the  desired  effect  in  the  smallest  amount. 
