PUBLICATION  OF  THE  REVISED  PHARMACOPOEIA.  513 
Pharmacopoeia  to  secure.  The  publication  in  advance  of  many 
proposed  changes,  the  labors  of  several  Committees  of  Re- 
vision, the  report  of  one  of  which  was  published  previous  to 
the  Convention — the  use  of  many  of  the  proposed  new  officinal 
formulae  by  the  College  of  Pharmacy  of  Philadelphia,  in  the 
preparation  of  the  Cabinet  forwarded  to  the  Great  Exhibition 
in  London,  and  the  unofficial  announcement  of  the  proposed 
changes,  made  in  detail  by  a  member  of  the  Committee  of  Re- 
vision at  the  late  meeting  of  the  American  Pharmaceutical  As- 
sociation, have  all  tended  to  this  unsettlement. 
3d.  The  present  season  of  the  year  is  one  in  which  the 
want  of  the  new  National  Standard  is  particularly  felt  by  the 
teachers  and  students  at  the  several  Medical  and  Pharmaceuti- 
cal Schools.  To  teach  as  officinal,  formulae  ten  years  old,  which 
are  about  to  be  superseded,  to  classes  just  receiving  their  first 
instructions  in  Materia  Medica  and  Pharmacy,  could  only 
be  justified  by  absolute  necessity. 
4th.  Whatever  may  be  the  fact,  there  is  a  general  impres- 
sion that  no  such  necessity  exists,  the  ordeal  through  which  the 
proposed  changes  have  passed,  first  in  the  preliminary  revisions, 
which  were  carefully  conducted  by  competent  physicians  and 
pharmaceutists,  and  with  the  advantages  of  discussion  in  large 
Committees  ;  secondly,  through  the  journals,  where  some  of 
them  have  been  ably  presented  and  discussed ;  and  thirdly,  in 
the  Committee  of  final  revision  which  has  met  weekly  during 
nearly  all  of  this  long  period,  and  has  verified  results  by  many 
experiments  and  the  most  careful  scrutiny,  must  have  been  am- 
ple for  every  necessary  purpose.  So  thinks  every  pharmaceu- 
tist and  physician  outside  the  Committee  with  whom  I  have 
conversed. 
5th.  The  progressive  spirit  of  our  age  and  country  is  at  war 
with  every  delay  which  appears  unnecessary,  and  especially  with 
a  delay  that  might  be  construed  as  involving  an  uncertain  or 
precarious  idea  of  Nationality.  Let  us  have  our  American 
Pharmacopoeia  which  will  doubtless  be  more  characteristic  and 
distinctive  than  ever  before,  and  which  it  is  to  be  hoped  will 
come  in  time  to  be  stamped  upon  the  memory  of  the  thousands 
of  young  men  under  instruction  during  the  present  winter  term, 
as  candidates  for  the  medical  and  pharmaceutical  professions. 
