206  The  Scope  of  the  National  Formulary.     { A,u-i°auyr;1P^arm 
largely  for  elixirs,  in  1873,  and  the  publication  of  a  supplementary 
compilation  in  1875. 
In  1883  Mr.  J.  W.  Colcord,  of  Lynn,  Mass.,  revived  the  propo- 
sition for  a  more  authoritative  compilation  of  generally  acceptable 
formulas  that  would  serve  as  a  guide  for  the  retail  pharmacist  and 
thus  permit  him  to  make  many  of  the  compound  pharmaceuticals 
that  he  was  then  buying. 
A  committee  was  duly  appointed,  but  little  or  nothing  was  accom- 
plished, at  least  not  under  the  direct  auspices  of  this  committee. 
In  the  meantime,  however,  the  pharmacists  in  the  larger  cities  were 
being  literally  overwhelmed  with  proprietary  elixirs,  made  by  large 
as  well  as  small  manufacturing  concerns  and  exploited  through  the 
medical  practitioners. 
To  eliminate  at  least  a  portion  of  the  then  existing  evil,  and  to 
give  physicians  an  opportunity  to  prescribe  without  specifying  the 
particular  manufacturer,  The  College  of  Pharmacy  of  the  City  of 
New  York,  The  Kings  County  Pharmaceutical  Society  of  Brooklyn 
and  the  German  Apothecaries'  Society  of  New  York  appointed  a 
joint  committee  to  compile  a  collection  of  formulas  for  the  then 
widely  used  non-official  preparations. 
This  committee,  under  the  able  leadership  of  the  late  Charles 
Rice,  completed  its  work  within  a  year,  and  in  1884  published  what  < 
became  known  as  "  The  New  York  and  Brooklyn  Formulary." 
This  Formulary,  comprising  a  total  of  eighty-one  formulas,  was 
reprinted  in  the  Volume  of  the  Proceedings  of  the  American  Phar- 
maceutical Association  for  1885,  and  was  subsequently  accepted  as 
the  basis  for  the  National  Formulary. 
Elaborating  on  this  formulary  the  committee  of  the  American 
Pharmaceutical  Association  published  a  preliminary  report,  in  1886, 
containing  414  formulas,  and  the  first  authoritative  edition  of  the 
National  Formulary  itself,  published  in  1888,  was  still  further 
elaborated  and  contained  435  formulas. 
The  second,  or  revised  edition,  published  in  1895,  comprised  454 
and  the  present,  third,  edition  of  the  book  contains  456  formulas  in 
the  body  of  the  book  and  114  formulas,  from  previous  editions  of 
the  Pharmacopoeia,  in  an  appendix. 
The  object  of  the  Formulary,  as  described  by  the  chairman  and 
the  committee  having  charge  of  the  original  compilation,  was  to 
gradually  include  every  preparation  legitimately  belonging  to  phar- 
