46 
Book  Reviews. 
f  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
\    January,  1914. 
elusion  in  the  recognized  materia  medica  of  conservative  medical 
practitioners. 
The  object  of  this,  the  latest  of  the  three  books  offered  by  the 
Council  on  Pharmacy  and  Chemistry  of  the  American  Medical  Asso- 
ciation, is  perhaps  best  shown  by  quoting  rather  liberally  from  the 
preface,  not  necessarily  exactly  but  rather  the  purport  of  the  state- 
ments made,  so  as  to  avoid  occasional  repetition  : 
"  Many  of  the  articles  in  the  Pharmacopoeia  and  in  the  National 
Formulary  are  worthless  or  superfluous.  The  repeated  efforts  that 
have  been  made  to  eliminate  at  least  the  more  useless  of  these 
articles  have  uniformly  encountered  the  assertion  that  the  articles 
objected  to  are  used  somewhere  by  some  one,  and  that  they  should, 
therefore,  be  officially  recognized  and  authoritatively  defined. 
"  For  a  number  of  years  men  active  in  the  work  of  the  Council 
on  Medical  Education  and  in  the  Confederation  of  State  Examining 
and  Licensing  Boards  have  been  trying  to  restrict  instruction  and 
examination  in  materia  medica  to  the  more  important  drugs.  These 
efforts  apparently  failed,  so  far  as  the  Committee  of  Revision  of  the 
U.  S.  P.  is  concerned,  but  the  suggestions  have  been  taken  up  and 
elaborated  by  the  Council  on  Pharmacy  and  Chemistry  and  the  result 
is  this  volume  on  useful  drugs. 
"  The  book  is  offered  as  a  fundamental  list  of  drugs  and  prepara- 
tions with  which  all  medical  students  and  practitioners  might  be 
expected  to  be  familiar,  and  to  which,  therefore,  state  examining  and 
licensing  boards  might  largely  or  entirely  confine  their  examinations 
in  materia  medica.  As  it  now  stands,  it  embodies  a  total  of  about 
455  headings  including  265  titles  of  drugs  and  chemicals,  137  phar- 
maceutical preparations,  13  cross  references  and  40  general  defi- 
nitions or  descriptions  of  forms  of  medicines." 
It  is  confidently  predicted  that  an  intelligent  and  critical  use  of 
these  selected  drugs  will  prove  their  general  sufficiency,  and  show 
definitely  that  many  drugs  now  discussed  in  text  books  and  official- 
ized in  pharmacopoeias,  are,  to  say  the  least,  superfluous.  A  careful 
study  of  this  book  is  also  well  designed  to  demonstrate  that  many 
newly  discovered  or  widely  exploited  proprietary  preparations  have 
no  appreciable  advantage  over  established  drugs  and  preparations 
whose  limitations  and  possible  untoward  results  are  generally  well 
known. 
Pharmacists  and  teachers  of  pharmacy  should  acquaint  them- 
selves with  the  nature  as  well  as  the  intent  of  the  volume.  The  last 
word  on  a  limited  list  of  useful  drugs  has  not  as  yet  been  said,  but 
