208  The  Scope  of  the  National  Formulary.  {Am-i°auyr;i^arrn- 
not  they  are  the  present-day  survivals  of  old-time  patent  medicines 
or  are  the  admitted  imitations  of  the  equally  objectionable,  pleasant- 
tasting,  alcoholic,  and  "ethical"  proprietaries  of  to-day. 
It  has  been  asserted,  and  on  very  good  authority,  that  a  fairly 
large  proportion  of  the  elixirs,  essences,  cure-alls  and  tonics,  ex- 
ploited  through  the  medical  profession  at  the  present  time,  really 
find  their  greatest  sale  in  the  demands  direct  from  the  laity. 
That  these  insidiously  attractive  alcoholic  preparations  do  reach 
the  public  directly  is  evidenced  by  the  price-list  of  any  one  of  the 
well-known  patent  medicine  venders  and  also  by  the  displays  made 
in  the  windows  of  cut-rate  drug  stores.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  alcohol  habit,  among  a  class  of  individuals  who  would  not 
think  of  consuming  it  in  the  form  of  wine  or  distilled  spirit,  or  even 
in  the  form  of  Peruna  or  Hostetter's  Bitters,  has  been  developed  and 
is  being  continued  by  the  use  of  one  or  the  other  well-known 
"ethical"  proprietary  first  prescribed  by  well-known  and  reputable 
physicians. 
Take,  for  instance,  the  compounds  of  pepsin  and  pancreatin,  of 
which  the  Council  on  Pharmacy  and  Chemistry,  in  a  recent  report 
{Journal  American  Medical  Association,  February  9,  1907)  enumerated 
no  less  than  thirty  preparations  exploited  by  thirteen  of  the  leading 
manufacturing  concerns  of  the  country.  It  has  been  demonstrated 
that  these  preparations  must  be  inert  so  far  as  their  proteolytic 
action  is  concerned,  and  still  they  have  been  in  use,  and  are  even 
to-day  in  use,  with  apparent  good  effect,  in  various  gastric  disturb- 
ances. The  National  Formulary  includes  formulas,  and  quite  a 
number  of  them,  for  preparations  equally  objectionable  as  those 
enumerated  in  the  report  of  the  Council,  and  in  fact  one  of  these 
formulas,  that  for  the  Digestive  Elixir,  was  mentioned  in  the  report, 
and  its  deletion  from  the  pages  of  the  National  Formulary  was 
recommended. 
It  is  generally  well  known  that  even  the  simple  mixtures  of  pepsin 
with  alcohol  and  aromatics  become  inert  on  keeping,  and  pro- 
prietary preparations,  even  those  containing  but  a  comparatively 
small  percentage  of  alcohol,  that  have  been  kept  on  hand  for  a  long 
period  of  time  must  be  unreliable  so  far  as  their  proteolytic  action 
is  concerned. 
Dr.  Torald  Sollman  (Journal  American  Medical  Association, 
February  2  and  9,  1907,  pages  415  and  521),  points  out  that  the 
