222  The  United  States  Pharmacopeia  and  { Am'Jay''i87h7!rm* 
council,  to  be  styled  the  Pharmacopoeial  Council  of  the  American 
Medical  Association."  This  council  of  five  to  "  be  charged  with  the 
entire  control  and  management  of  the  Pharmacopoeia  in  all  its 
details."  (p.  13.)  The  American  Pharmaceutical  Association  being 
u  invited "  to  select  and  appoint  two  pharmacists  to  serve  on  the 
council,  the  ingenious  author  of  the  scheme  acknowledges  that  "  it 
seems  a  little  doubtful,  however,  whether  the  Association  will  accept 
such  an  invitation  if  tendered  (p.  52.)  and  he  expresses  an  artless 
"  surprise  "  that  several  prominent  members  should  have  been  so 
"  unreasonable "  as  to  object  to  so  advantageous  an  arrangement. 
(P-  53-) 
Is  it  seriously  supposed  that  a  co-ordinate  national  Association  could, 
with  self-respect,  accept  an  "  invitation  "  to  assist,  "  under  the  fully 
recognized  leadership  of  the  American  Medical  Association,"  in  eking 
out  the  lack  of  special  skill  and  training  of  a  body  which  had  unwar- 
rantably "  assumed  "  a  task  for  which  that  body  was  utterly  unquali- 
fied ?  ct  The  professions  of  medicine  and  pharmacy  are  inseparable  in 
a  pharmacopoeia  ;  and  it  seems  irrational  to  try  to  draw  a  dividing 
line."  (p.  48.)  And  who  has  been  prominently  engaged  in  this 
u  irrational  "  attempt,  if  not  the  man  who  has  undertaken  to  wrest  a 
great  work  from  an  "  inseparable  "  organization  of  the  pharmacist  and 
physician,  to  place  it  under  the  entire  control  and  "  fully  recognized 
leadership  "  of  the  medical  profession  ? 
Our  revolutionist  very  properly  deprecates  all  attempts  at  encourag- 
ing a  jealous  feeling  between  the  physician  and  the  pharmacist. 
"  Medicine  and  pharmacy,"  he  says,  "  without  their  natural  con- 
nection and  dependence  upon  each  other,  would  soon  lose  their  utility 
to  mankind.  .  .  .  And  an  imaginary  antagonism  between  them, 
which  has  been  too  much  cultivated  of  late  on  both  parts,  is  exercising 
a  degenerating  effect  on  both."  (p.  7.)  And  yet  the  whole  fabric  of 
reconstruction,  so  laboriously  devised,  is  based  on  an  unconscious 
sentiment  of  rivalry  between  the  two  professions. 
It  needs  no  argument  to  show  that  for  an  efficient  revision  of  the 
Pharmacopoeia  there  is  required  the  co-operation  of  at  least  four 
classes  of  specially  trained  experts  ;  first,  one  or  more  medical  experts, 
to  bring  a  large  experience  and  knowledge  to  bear  on  the  therapeutic 
value  of  proposed  additions  to,  or  withdrawals  from,  the  Materia 
Medica  ;  second  and  third,  one  or  more  botanical  experts,  and  one  or 
