Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
May,  1890. 
Standardized  Preparations. 
211 
credit  therefor  may  as  well  be  taken.  But  if  upon  the  other  hand, 
the  standardization  of  the  drug  alone  furnishes  no  guarantee  of  the 
uniformity  of  the  preparations,  and  the  latter  must  be  taken  solely 
upon  trust,  then  it  is  certainly  not  a  business-like  proceeding,  not- 
withstanding that  we  may  entertain  the  utmost  confidence  in  all 
parties  concerned.  Recently  a  number  of  very  prominent  writers 
upon  this  subject  have  offered  the  weighty  argument  that  such  of 
the  ordinary  color  reactions,  precipitation  and  other  tests  for  active 
constituents  as  can  be  readily  applied  by  the  average  pharmacist, 
are  not  sufficiently  definite  to  exclude  sophistication.  Freely 
admitting  some  difficulty  in  this  direction,  the  reply  can  still  be 
made,  that  attempts  at  such  sophistication  are  extremely  unlikely 
to  be  made,  however  possible  it  might  be  to  make  them.  The  retail 
pharmacist,  upon  whom  the  responsibility  rests,  is  certain  not  to  do 
so,  whether  he  manufacture  his  own  preparations  or  whether  he 
prefers  to  purchase  them.  If  he  purchase  his  preparations  in 
original  packages,  then  the  jobber  or  wholesaler  cannot  tamper 
with  them  except  under  such  risks  as  would  not  be  taken  once  in  a 
century ;  and  no  one  who  is  familiar  with  the  supersensitive  pulse  of 
the  manufacturer  can  believe  that  he  would  dare  venture  upon  such 
an  attempt,  the  discovery  of  which — ultimately  more  or  less  certain 
— would  not  only  impose  legal  penalties,  but  the  destruction  of  his 
patronage. 
Moreover,  it  is  not  true  that  this  difficulty  actually  exists  in  the 
case  of  all  active  constituents.  There  are  a  number — and  according 
to  some  authorities  of  unquestioned  ability  and  experience,  a  con- 
siderable number — of  them,  the  positive  identification  of  which  is 
sufficiently  easy  for  the  average  pharmacist.  Can  we  not  with  per- 
fect confidence  leave  the  investigation  and  decision  of  these  questions 
to  the  ability  and  good  judgment  of  the  committee  of  revision, 
merely  instructing  them  that  it  is  the  wish  of  the  Convention  that 
standardization  should  be  extended  to  the  preparations  where  it  is 
in  their  opinion,  admissible. 
If,  as  it  is  to  be  hoped,  such  action  shall  be  taken,  the  question 
as  to  what  preparations  shall  be  standardized  is  no  less  important. 
In  the  last  number  of  the  Pittsburgh  Medical  Review,  the  editor, 
than  whom  no  more  earnest  and  conscientious  contributor  is  to  be 
found  in  the  land,  argues  that  a  new  line  of  preparations  should  not 
be  established,  but  that  those  already  provided  should  be  use.d  for 
