Am  jour,  pharm.  |      fhe  Laboratory  in  War  Time. 
February,  19 18.  } 
123 
and  manufacturers  found  shipments  arriving  at  their  doors  con- 
sisting of  boxes  and  bottles  of  all  sorts  and  sizes  and  bearing 
marks  of  having  passed  through  the  stocks  of  the  jobber  and  re- 
tailer. 
This  condition  has  forced  the  trial  of  numerous  substitutes. 
The  laboratory  telephone  is  constantly  ringing,  and  the  voice  at  the 
other  end  reports  no  more  of  a  certain  article  can  be  had  and  asks 
what  can  be  done  to  keep  the  works  going.  Questions  like  these  are 
puzzling  to  the  laboratory.  Substitutes  are  offered  on  every  hand, 
but  for  most  things  there  are  no  substitutes.  The  laboratory  has  to 
hold  checks  more  than  ever  upon  all  raw  materials.  Materials  which 
would  be  entirely  rejected  in  ordinary  times  must  be  made  to  do, 
provided,  as  in  many  instances,  they  can  be  purified  and  made  over. 
Then,  with  increasing  tensity,  we  have  been  rationed.  Glycerin, 
alkaloids,  bleaching  materials,  anything  and  everything  that  enters 
into  explosives  or  are  in  any  way  connected  with  war  preparations 
have  been  cut  down  in  supply  or  their  use  in  commerce  interdicted 
altogether. 
Almost  immediately  upon  the  declaration  of  war  the  foreign 
countries  placed  an  embargo  upon  most  drugs  and  chemicals  here- 
tofore received  from  abroad,  even  chemicals  and  apparatus  used  in 
the  laboratory  for  testing  purposes.  But  the  laboratory  work  had 
to  go  on.  Embargoes  have  increased  in  kind  and  in  quantity  as  the 
war  progressed  until  at  the  present  time  they  embrace  even  the 
containers  in  which  goods  are  packed  and  the  coal  used  under  the 
boilers. 
An  interesting  feature  of  the  war  has  been  the  attempt  to  grow 
drug  plants  in  America.  Before  the  war  manufacturers  purchased 
their  crude  drugs  from  abroad  and  tons  were  piled  up  in  their  store- 
houses. When  the  supply  was  suddenly  shut  off,  everybody  said  at 
once,  "We  will  grow  our  own  plants."  They  soon  found  that 
drug  plants  will  not  grow  on  paper  or  by  word  of  mouth.  At  once 
there  was  an  increased  interest  as  to  the  source  of  the  plants  which 
supply  our  materia  medica.  We  remembered  that  attention  had 
been  called,  especially  in  the  American  Journal  of  Pharmacy,  to 
the  decreasing  supply  of  medicinal  plants  at  home  and  abroad  and 
we  regretted  that  we  had  not  heeded  the  warning. 
In  a  truly  American  way  everybody  started  in  to  grow  drugs. 
The  public  press  rang  with  extraordinary  claims  of  imaginary  profits 
