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SELECTED ARTICLES. 
culties, — of those measures which appear practicable, and most 
likely to diminish the evil. 
I. Under the first of these heads, it might perhaps be suffi- 
cient to refer to the general conviction of the profession, or to 
what has been written on the adulteration of medicines in 
various excellent works on Materia Medica and Pharmacy. 
But it will bring the matter more home to the minds of all, if 
some details be entered into, consisting of a few facts which 
have chiefly occurred to my own observation, and among 
which are some, not unimportant, yet either unknown, or but 
little attended to in any pharmaceutic works. With this view 
is subjoined the following list of adulterations, which could 
be easily extended, were it necessary. 
1. A few years ago I directed the attention of medical men 
to the frequency of the adulteration of iodide of potassium 
with carbonate of potash. A faint contamination of this na- 
ture is exceedingly common, because it can with difficulty 
be avoided in the manufacture of the salt; but impurity from 
this cause is of little consequence to medical practice, because 
it never exceeds one, two, or at the utmost five per cent. 
Not unfrequently, however, it amounts to ten per cent, or up- 
wards, for which carelessness is the lightest excuse that can 
be found; and I have examined specimens, at one time very 
generally to be met with in this country, where the carbonate 
with its accompanying water amounted to ninety parts in the 
hundred, — which, it need scarcely be said, was an express so- 
phistication. Can we wonder, then, that practitioners should 
complain of the iodide of potassium, that they have given it 
for months, nay even for years, without observing any effect 
either on the constitution, or on the disease for which it was 
administered? Another adulteration is with muriate of soda 
or potash. Some have considered this to be a frequent impu- 
rity. 
But I have not met with it so often as the other, and it 
has appeared to me always less in amount, seldom surpassing 
