40  American  Phaniiaceiitical  Association.  / Am.  jour.  pharm. 
^  (    January,  1911. 
THE  CITY  OF  WASHINGTON  BRANCH  OF  THE  AMERI- 
CAN PHARMACEUTICAL  ASSOCIATION. 
The  regular  stated  meeting-  of  the  City  of  Washington  Branch 
of  the  American  Pharmaceutical  Association  was  held  at  the  Hotel 
Raleigh  on  the  evening  of  November  ii,  1910,  with  the  members  of 
the  Association  of  Official  Agricultural  Chemists  as  guests. 
The  subject  under  discussion  was  The  Pharmacopoeial  Conven- 
tion of  1910  and  the  prospective  Pharmacopoeia  of  the  United  States. 
Dr.  H.  W.  Wiley,  the  President  of  the  United  States  Pharma- 
copoeial Convention,  presented  a  communication  in  the  course  of 
which  he  outlined  his  opinions  regarding  the  Pharmacopoeia  and  the 
methods  to  be  followed  in  revising  it. 
Prof.  Joseph  P.  Remington,  the  Chairman  of  the  Committee 
of  Revision,  expressed  the  opinion  that  the  Convention  was  indeed 
fortunate  in  having  Dr.  Harvey  W.  Wiley  as  its  president  and  pre- 
sented a  short  communication  in  the  course  of  which  he  commented 
on  some  of  the  more  important  points  referred  to  by  Dr.  Wiley  and 
outlined  the  nature  and  amount  of  work  that  had  been  accomplished 
during  the  summer  months. 
Commenting  further  on  the  scope  of  the  Pharmacopoeia  he  ex- 
pressed the  belief  that  the  real  sentiment  of  both  physicians  and 
pharmacists  was  neither  in  favor  of  a  skeleton  pharmacopoeia  nor 
of  a  padded  pharmacopoeia,  l3ut  of  what  he  was  pleased  to  designate 
as  a  sane  pharmacopoeia. 
He  then  called  attention  to  a  prospective  communication  by  Prof. 
Rusby,  for  the  Asso-^iation  of  Official  Agricultural  Chemists,  in 
which  he  points  out  the  need  for  having  a  book  of  standards  for  all 
drugs  that  are  widely  used,  so  as  to  facilitate  and  simplify  the  work 
of  the  United  States  Custom  House  officials  in  connection  with  the 
importation  of  drugs. 
Prof.  Remington  also  pointed  out  that  for  many  years  the 
Pharmacopoeia  was  a  closed  book  to  the  medical  profession  because 
its  members  had  been  lead  away  from  it  by  the  detail  man  of  the 
manufacturer  and  proprietarv  medicine  maker.  The  resulting  decay 
of  therapeutics  has  brought  about  a  state  of  confusion  and  a  tendency 
to  therapeutic  nihilism  that  he  considers  to  be  most  unfortunate. 
He  holds  that  physicians  do  not  know  a  sufficient  number  of 
U.S. P.  preparations  and  do  not  appreciate  the  fact  that  their  fellow 
practitioners  in  different  parts  of  the  country,  and  in  different  cities, 
