282 
Progress  in  Phanuacy. 
J  Am.  Jour.  Pharm 
1      .laii«,  1911. 
PROGRESS  IN  PHARMACY 
a  quarterly  review  of  some  of  the  more  interesting  liter- 
ature relating  to  pharmacy  and  materia  medica. 
By  M.  L  Wilbert. 
The  first  anniversary  of  the  United  States  Pharmacopoeial 
Convention  appears  to  have  been  the  occasion  for  an  unusual 
number  of  interesting  happenings  bearing-  on  the  Pharmacopoeia 
of  the  United  States,  its  scope,  uses,  standing  in  law  and  the 
progress  of  the  present  revision  of  the  book. 
Not  the  least  important  of  these  several  items  is  the  renewed 
interest  that  is  being  manifested  in  the  scope  of  the  Pharmacopoeia 
and  the  possible  uses  of  the  book  as  a  basis  for  rational  instruction 
in  materia  medica. 
Dr.  Arthur  Dean  Bevan,  in  his  address  as  Chairman  of  the 
Council  on  Medical  Education  of  the  American  Medical  Association, 
in  referring  to  this  need  says : 
"  A  limited  list  of  drug  preparations  containing'  only  those 
which  are  most  useful  and  important,  is  of  particular  value  to 
medical  education  at  the  present  time.  With  the  overcrowded 
condition  of  the  medical  curriculum,  it  is  highly  important  that 
the  small  amount  of  time  which  the  student  has  to  devote  to  the 
study  of  drug  preparations  should  be  largely  spent  in  obtaining 
a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  more  important  drugs  rather  than 
in  the  obtaining  of  a  superficial  knowledge  of  all  drugs,  the  ma- 
jority of  which  are  of  little  or  no  value." 
The  members  of  the  Association  of  American  Medical  Colleges, 
present  at  the  annual  meeting  held  in  Chicago  in  Eebruary,  1911, 
also  discussed  the  various  phases  of  the  same  question  and  unani- 
mously adopted  a  resolution  asserting  that  the  use  of  a  small  but 
representative  group  of  medicaments  in  teaching  pharmacology  and 
materia  medica  is  conducive  to  scientific  progress  in  therapeutics. 
U.S. P.  Scope. — An  editorial  (/.  Am.  M.  Ass.,  1911?  v.  ^6,  p. 
1269)  discussing  the  scope  of  the  next  Pharmacopoeia,  asserts  that 
although  the  Committee  of  Revision  of  the  United  States  Pharma- 
copoeia was  appointed  nearly  a  year  ago,  it  has  issued  no  report 
to  show  what  progress  has  been  made,  and  points  out  that  the 
Committee  should  realize  that  the  medical  profession  is  interested 
as  never  before  as  to  what  should  be  added  to,  or  deleted  from. 
