212  The  United  States  Pharmacopoeia  and  {Am'J™%f%!"*' 
be  doubted  by  any  reasonable  person,  for  the  testimony  of  the  great 
mass  of  the  profession  will  be  heartily,  promptly  and  thankfully  accorded 
to  this  proposition."  (p.  33.)  But  the  objection  is  raised  that  the 
existing  Convention  u  has  not  been  so  successful  in  the  later  revisions, 
and  notably  defective  in  the  last  one,  when  the  committee  of  final 
revision  and  publication  refused  to  carry  out  the  instructions  of  the 
Convention,  and  substituted  its  own  judgment  in  opposition  to  that  of 
the  authority  by  which  the  committee  was  created."  (p.  5.)  It  is  pre- 
sumed that  this  somewhat  severe  condemnation  (which,  after  all,  cer- 
tainly cannot  fall  upon  the  Convention)  refers  to  the  failure  of  the  execu- 
tive committee  to  substitute  measures  of  weight  in  all  formulas  of 
liquid  preparations,  for  measures  of  capacity,  as  directed  by  the  sixth 
resolution  of  general  instructions.  Now  it  must  be  said  in  extenuation 
of  this  dereliction,  that  the  proposed  change  was  admittedly  a  very 
radical  one  ;  that  probably  very  few  of  the  members  of  the  Convention 
who  voted  for  the  change  fully  realized  the  amount  of  labor  and 
responsibility  involved  in  the  reconstruction  of  formulas  on  the  basis  of 
weight  alone,  in  deciding  on  just  ratios,  in  many  cases  by  new  and 
original  determinations  of  specific  gravity,  and  in  probably  modifying 
more  or  less  every  tincture,  solution  and  mixture  of  the  Pharmacopoeia, 
and  that  this  additional  labor  would  probably  have  entailed  another 
year  of  delay  in  the  completion  of  the  work.  This  fault  of  omission 
on  the  part  of  the  committee,  at  the  worst  but  a  conservative  retarda- 
tion of  the  car  of  progress,  leaving  the  Pharmacopoeia  no  less  use- 
ful than  in  its  previous  revisions,  certainly  forms  no  very  cogent  reason 
for  impugning  or  invading  the  legitimate  jurisdiction  of  the  Convention. 
But  it  is  further  objected  (and  this  in  an  argument  before  the  last 
meeting  of  the  American  Pharmaceutical  Association)  that  the  last 
revision  of  the  Pharmacopoeia  "does  not  represent  the  progress  in 
pharmacy  up  to  the  time  "  that  its  descriptions  and  details  are  insuf- 
ficient "  that  its  processes  are  many  of  them  unnecessary  " — some 
"  defective,  while  a  few  are  positively  bad;"  and  "that  there  are 
more  errors  in  it"  than  there  should  be.  (pp.  10,  11.)  Vague  as  are 
these  allegations,  they  may  be  met  with  a  simple  and  direct  traverse. 
It  may  be  confidently  affirmed  that  in  relative  excellence,  in  fullness, 
and  in  general  accuracy,  the  last  edition  of  the  Pharmacopoeia  com- 
pares favorably  with  its  predecessors,  upon  which  Dr.  Squibb  has 
expended  his  contrasted  praise  that  "the  work  was  so  admirably  done." 
