316 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 
Dublin College. In this country we were long without any 
such generally recognized code ; and the preparations were 
made according to the directions of one or another of the Bri- 
tish Colleges at the discretion of the apothecary, or even ac- 
cording to some favorite recipe of his own; so that compound- 
ed medicines of the same title were often entirely different in 
different sections of the country, and even in different shops of 
the same town. The first effort to remedy the evil of which 
I have any knowledge was made in 1808 by the Medical So- 
ciety of Massachusetts, by which measures were taken for the 
preparation of a Pharmacopoeia, which was published, and was 
afterwards adopted by the Medical Society of New Hamp- 
shire. But no general movement took place till about the 
beginning of the year 1S20, when a Convention of Physicians, 
fiom various parts of the country met at Washington, and 
framed a Pharmacopseia which was intended to express the 
sentiments of the profession throughout the Union, and thus 
to acquire an authority which we have not the means of con- 
ferring on such a work by law. It was denominated the 
Pharmacopoeia of the United States, and was received, to a con- 
siderable extent, as the pharmaceutical standard of the coun- 
try; but its many defects and errors, such as are incident to a 
new undertaking, and especially to one in which numerous 
irresponsible hands are engaged, prevented its universal accept- 
ance. Provision, however, had been made for the supply of 
these deficiencies by a revision at the end of ten years. Ac- 
cordingly, in January, 1830, a second Convention met at 
Washington, by whose authority a revised and very much 
amended edition was published. This has been subsequently 
admitted by the country in general as an authoritative phar- 
maceutical code, though, in the absence of any legal sanction, 
it has not been altogether sufficient to restrain propensities to 
independent action on the part of individuals. In order to 
render the work still more worthy of the place which it claims 
to occupy, as well as to bring it up to the present level of our 
knowledge, a third Convention, which met at the commence- 
ment of the present year in Washington, provided for another 
