AmjJu°iySarm'}     Current  Notes  for  Future  History.  345 
degree  of  adulteration  or  sophistication  of  drugs  and  medicinal 
preparations. 
Unfortunately  for  all  concerned,  the  officials  of  the  Board  oi 
Health  devoted  their  attention  at  first  to  investigating  and  report- 
ing on  a  patented  chemical,  one  that  is  not  official  in  the  United 
States  Pharmacopoeia,  and  one  for  which  there  are  no  generally 
known  or  easily  applied  tests  to  distinguish  it  from  several  other 
preparations  of  a  similar  nature. 
The  report  of  the  initial  investigations  ol  the  Board  of  Health 
had  a  tendency  to  discredit  the  motives  that  induced  the  inquiry;  it 
has  also  had  a  tendency  to  vitiate  the  ultimate  results  that  should 
have  accrued: 
A  second  series  of  investigations  by  the  same  Board,  with  the 
object  of  demonstrating  the  widespread  use  of  wood  alcohol  in  phar- 
macopceial  preparations,  in  place  of  the  official  grain  alcohol,  dis- 
closed a  considerable  amount  of  substitution,  although  it  should  be 
added  that  the  use  of  wood  alcohol  appears  to  be  confined  entirely 
to  preparations  that  were  intended  for  external  use.  This  aggres- 
sive action  of  the  Board  of  Health  of  the  City  of  New  York  appears 
to  have  stimulated  other  authoritative  bodies  in  different  parts  of  the 
country  to  make  similar  investigations.  In  many  instances  these 
investigations  have  occasioned  more  or  less  sensational  reports  to  be 
made  through  the  daily  papers,  though  the  majority  of  them  have 
had  only  a  local  influence. 
One  unfortunate  outcome  of  this  particular  crusade  has  been  the 
passing  of  a  bill  by  the  Legislature  of  the  State  of  New  York,  mak- 
ing it  a  criminal  offence  for  a  druggist  to  substitute  any  preparation, 
other  than  the  one  intended  by  the  physician,  on  any  prescription 
or  order. 
Fortunately,  the  wording  of  this  bill  was  so  ambiguous,  and  its 
provisions  so  difficult  of  execution,  that  the  Governor  of  the  State 
refused  to  affix  his  signature  to  the  same. 
This  is,  of  course,  only  one  of  a  number  of  similar  measures  that 
will  be  introduced  into  the  several  State  Legislatures  in  the  near 
future.  A  recent  editorial  in  the  American  Druggist  (May  1 1,  1903), 
in  commenting  on  this  mischievous  tendency  of  modern  legislative 
bodies  says  :  "  One  of  the  most  distressing  evils  of  our  own  time  is 
the  blundering  and  bungling  legislator,  the  meddling  and  muddling 
law-maker  who  seeks  to  remedy  real  or  imaginary  social  or  political 
