264 
Minutes  of  the  College. 
f  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
1       May,  1877. 
committees  of  final  revision  ;  and,  after  having  been  so  used,  have  been  returned 
to  the  College  to  be  deposited  among  their  documents.  I  think  they  will  give  an 
adequate  idea  of  the  amount  of  work  necessary  to  make  a  report  on  the  subject  to 
the  Decennial  Committee  to  act  upon.  Other  Colleges  are  equally  as  active  as 
ours,  and  all  that  work  it  would  be  entirely  optional  with  this  proposed  committee 
or  council  to  accept  or  reject.  If  any  of  the  members  feel  an  interest  in  examining 
that  kind  of  work,  these  books  will  perhaps  convey  a  better  idea  as  to  what  has 
been  done  in  years  past  than  anything  else.  Such  works  cannot  be  made  without 
great  labor.  It  would  be  a  matter  of  some  interest  if  the  American  Med- 
ical Association  were  to  appoint  a  committee  to  see  the  amount  of  work  which  the 
pharmacists  have  performed.  No  medical  association  appoints  a  committee  to  go 
over  the  ground  and  prepare  work  ;  and  if  the  apothecaries  have  undue  weight  there, 
I  can  see  how  they  are  entitled  to  it,  for  the  reason  of  their  having  done  vastly  more 
work. 
Prof.  Robert  Bridges  Mr.  Wiegand  is  mistaken  on  one  point,  in  saying  that 
no  medical  colleges  have  undertaken  such  a  work  as  this.  The  College  of  Physi- 
cians has  always  appointed  a  committee  two  years  before,  who  has  thoroughly 
prepared  a  report,  and  sent  it.  I  am  sorry  to  say  not  many  medical  societies  have 
done  the  same. 
Mr.  E.  M.  Boring.  The  labor  of  the  pharmacists  shown  us  by  Mr.  Wiegand, 
that  Dr.  Squibb  proposes  to  have  paid  for,  was  a  labor  of  love  from  this  College. 
The  Committee  on  Resolutions,  Prof.  Maisch,  chairman,  made  a  report,  which, 
after  some  verbal  alterations,  was  read,  as  follows: 
Resolved,  That  the  Philadelphia  College  of  Pharmacy  does  earnestly  deprecate  and  object  to  the 
proposed  transfer  of  authority  for  revising  the  "United  States  Pharmacopoeia"  from  the  National  Phar- 
macopceial  Convention,  as  proposed  by  Dr.  E.  R.  Squibb,  believing  that  any  such  transfer  would  be 
subversive  of  the  best  interests  both  of  the  medical  and  pharmaceutical  professions,  and  that  the  nearest 
approach  to  a  national  character  in  the  work  will  be  that  derived  from  the  convention  now  specially 
provided  for  the  purpose. 
Resolved,  That  the  Secretary  of  this  College  be  directed  to  forward  a  copy  of  these  resolutions  to  the 
President  of  the  American  Medical  Association,  to  be  laid  before  that  body. 
On  motion  of  Prof.  Remington,  the  resolutions  were  passed  unanimously. 
Prof.  Maisch.  I  desire  to  say  a  few  words  in  regard  to  the  manner  in  which 
our  Pharmacopoeia  has  been  gotten  up.  The  history  of  the  establishment  of  our 
National  Pharmacopoeia  is  a  peculiar  one,  and  shows  that  the  pharmacists  have  had 
an  interest  in  it  from  the  beginning  of  the  establishment  of  pharmaceutical  societies. 
The  first  "Pharmacopoeia"  appeared  in  1820,  previous  to  which  time  the  subject 
attracted  the  attention  of  the  New  York  County  Medical  Society,  where  Dr. 
Lyman  Spaulding  submitted  a  series  of  resolutions,  including  a  plan  which  divided 
the  United  States  into  four  sections,  and  proposed  that  in  each  section  the  incor- 
porated medical  societies  should  form  a  pharmacopoeia,  and  these  four  pharma- 
copoeias should  be  merged  together  by  a  National  Convention.  It  appears,  however, 
that  in  those  four  districts  only  one  convention  was  held,  at  Washington,  and  from 
that  resulted  the  first  pharmacopoeia.  At  that  time  there  was  no  pharmaceutical 
society  in  existence  in  the  United  States.  The  Philadelphia  College  was  established 
in  1 821,  a  year  after  the  first  "Pharmacopoeia  of  the  United  States  of  America" 
was  issued.    In  1820,  the  President  of  the  Convention  received  authority  to  call, 
