THE  AMEEIOA]Sr 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY 
MARCH,  igii 
THE  BIOLOGICAL  STANDARDIZATION  OF  DRUGS. 
By  Worth  Hale,  M.D., 
Assistant  Pharmacologist,  Hygienic  Laboratory,  U.S.P.H.  and  M.H. 
Service,  Washington,  D.  C. 
Pharmacy  calls  for  accuracy  as  applied  to  remedial  agents. 
Absolute  and  unfailing  accuracy  to  the  limits  of  scientific  knowl- 
edge and  unvarying  honesty  are  fundamental  principles  to  be 
emphasized  and  dwelt  upon  from  the  beginning  of  a  course  in 
Pharmacy  or  of  medicine,  until  the  last  prescription  is  compounded. 
There  should  be  no  guess  work  and  every  effort  on  the  part  of 
pharmacist  or  doctor  or  laboratory  worker  to  promote  greater 
exactitude  so  far  as  drugs  and  medicines  are  concerned  is  to 
advance  the  heaHng  art.  Nor  is  it  an  unworthy  ideal  for  careless- 
ness in  the  field  of  drugs  and  medicine  is  scarcely  less  dangerous 
than  for  railroad  engineers  to  guess  at  the  color  of  signals  and 
there  is  no  questioning  that  hundreds  of  people  are  annually  killed 
because  such  haphazard  and  commercial  methods  have  been  used 
in  preparing  drugs  that  they  do  not  have  the  virtues  expected  of 
them. 
We  too  often  forget  that  not  only  medicine  but  also  pharmacy 
is  a  business  dealing  in  life  and  health.  It  is  trite  to  say  that 
human  life  often  hangs  upon  a  thread  and  that  the  merest  in- 
cident may  determine  the  issue ;  that  the  failure  of  a  drug  to 
have  the  strength  it  is  supposed  to  have  because  of  impurity  or 
dangerous  deterioration  or  adulteration  or  lack  of  active  principles 
(97) 
