AmMlyr,'^rnL}     The  American  Medical  Association.  217 
Whereas,  A  national  Pharmacopoeia  "  is  the  result  of  accumulated  experience 
and  scientific  research  as  directed  to  remedial  agents,  and  especially  aims  to  estab- 
lish a  standard  for  quality,  strength  and  uniformity  in  the  materia  medica  ;  and  in 
accomplishing  this  it  also  becomes  of  necessity  an  authorized  formulary  for  com- 
pounding the  substances  of  the  materia  medica,  or  converting  them  into  such  pre- 
parations as  come  into  general  use  under  specific  names,"  etc.  ;  therefore  be  it 
Resolved,  That  the  American  Pharmaceutical  Association  does  now  and  hereby 
assume  the  ownership  of  the  "  Pharmacopoeia  of  the  United  States  of  America." 
And  as  the  superior  representative  body  of  the  organized  profession  of  Pharmacy, 
does  now  and  hereby  relieve  the  "National  Convention  for  Revising  the  Pharm- 
acopoeia "  from  any  farther  acts  of  ownership,  control  or  management  of  the 
Pharmacopoeia. 
If  this  resolution  should  strike  the  author  of  its  original,  as  being 
somewhat  presumptuous,  to  the  present  writer  it  really  appears  much 
less  so  than  the  one  it  parodies. 
The  fundamental  fallacy  of  the  repeated  declaration  "  that  the 
American  Medical  Association  as  the  only  concrete  body  or  organiza- 
tion which  fairly  represents  the  whole  medical  profession  of  the  United 
States,  and  therefore  as  really  owning  the  United  States  Pharm- 
acopoeia as  one  of  its  most  important  general  interests,  should  now 
take  possession  of  the  Pharmacopoeia  and  control  it  henceforth," 
(p.  13.)  lies  in  the  equivocal  use  of  the  word  "  medical."  The  postulate 
is  approximately  true,  only  on  the  narrow  and  technical  implication  that 
the  u  medical  profession  "  is  equivalent  to  the  art  of  applied  medicine, 
in  other  words,  to  u  therapeutics  and  in  this  sense  the  sequence  be- 
comes (be  it  said  with  all  respect)  ridiculously  inadequate.  On  any 
broad  and  philosophical  significance  of  the  phrase  as  embracing  the 
abstract  science  of  medicine  or  "  pharmacology,"  the  declaration  is 
self-evidently  erroneous.  For  any  purpose  of  giving  plausibility  to  the 
quod  erat  desideratum,  for  any  purpose  of  giving  equitable  color  of  juris- 
diction to  a  pharmacopoeia,  it  is  very  far  from  correct  to  affirm  or  to 
assume  that  the  American  Medical  Association  u  fairly  represents  the 
whole  medical  profession  !"  So  far  the  contrary,  that  most  important 
part  of  it,  specially  devoted  to  the  study  and  preparation  of  "  medi- 
cines," is  in  that  body  entirely  unrepresented.  And  yet  our  author 
has  himself  admitted  "  that  pharmacy  is  as  much  a  part  of  medicine  as 
surgery,"  (p.  22) — very  much  more  ;  for  surgery  is  not  in  strictness  an 
application  of  ct  medicine." 
"  The  Pharmacopoeia,  then,  is  a  general  interest  of  medicine.  .  .  . 
Now,  if  one  of  the  general  interests  of  medicine,  who  has  a  right  to 
