24  Work  of  the  Council  on  Pharmacy.     { A  ja^ua?yPiS.m* 
sent  hexamethylenetetramine,  a  chemical  compound  now  recog- 
nized as  official  in  the  U.  S.  Pharmacopoeia  under  its  proper  chemi- 
cal name.  The  number  of  these  foreign  made  synthetics  during 
recent  years  has  grown  enormously,  so  that  several  small  handbooks 
have  been  issued,  simply  to  furnish  an  enumeration  and  explanation 
of  this  class  of  compounds. 
It  can  be  readily  seen,  therefore,  that  this  state  of  things  could 
not  but  have  a  bewildering  effect  upon  the  physician  to  whom  these 
new  and  strongly  recommended  preparations  were  brought  by  the 
agents  of  the  dealers  or  to  whom  they  were  sent  in  trial  samples,  and 
equally  paralyzing  upon  the  retail  pharmacist  who  is  obliged  to  keep 
all  of  these  newer  preparations  in  stock,  that  might,  by  any  chance^ 
be  called  for  by  the  physician's  prescriptions.  It  was  not  possible 
for  the  individual  practitioner  to  make  a  special  study  of  this  whole 
field,  which  would  really  be  needed  to  enable  him  to  make  a  proper 
selection,  and,  therefore,  he  felt  obliged  to  turn  to  some  authorita- 
tive expression  of  opinion  on  the  subject. 
It  is  true  the  Committee  of  Revision  of  the  U.  S.  Pharmacopoeia, 
in  making  up  the  text  for  the  Pharmacopoeia  recently  issued 
(Eighth  revision  U.S. P.),  made  a  selection  of  some  eighteen  of 
the  most  important  of  these  synthetic  chemical  compounds,  giv- 
ing, of  course,  full  accounts  of  their  chemical  identity  and  tests 
for  purity,  and,  in  all  but  one  or  two  cases,  selecting  a  chemical 
name,  rather  than  to  accept  any  proprietary  name,  but  as  the 
number  continued  to  increase,  and  as  the  reports  with  regard  to 
their  value  in  actual  practice  came  in,  their  relative  merits  changed 
appreciably,  and  some  organized  effort  was  certainly  needed  to  make 
a  selection  of  a  limited  number  of  the  most  valuable  ones,  and  fur- 
nish the  information  with  regard  to  them. 
When  we  turn  to  synthetics  of  American  manufacture,  with  the 
exception  of  a  few  products,  and  a  very  few,  of  some  of  our  estab- 
lished manufacturing  firms,  the  so-called  American  synthetic  was 
either  a  mixture  of  substances,  or  else  an  out-and-out  fake.  Most 
of  us  will  recall  the  showing  up  of  the  acetanilid  mixtures  a  year  or 
so  ago,  most  of  which  had  been  calling  themselves  synthetics  and, 
besides  having  trade-marked  proprietary  names,  had,  in  some  cases, 
attempted,  after  the  model  of  the  German  synthetic,  to  give  chemicaL 
synonyms.  In  one  case  which  came  within  my  personal  knowledge,, 
a  very  elaborate  patent  specification,  regularly  issued  for  a  U. 
