Am.  Jour.  Phaiiu.  \ 
December,  1911.  j" 
Progress  in  Pharmacy. 
569 
Wiley's  enemies  are  opposed  to  him  because  he  represents  a  prin- 
ciple— that  of  protection  to  the  consumer.  They  would  be  equally 
antagonistic  to  any  other  individual  holding  the  same  position  and 
actuated  by  the  same  ideas." 
U.  S.  P.  Revision.— An  editorial  (/.  Am.  M.  Ass.,  1911,  v.  57, 
pp.  989-991)  comments  on  the  proposed  scope  of  the  U.  S.  P.  IX 
and  the  relation  of  this  first  report  of  the  Executive  Committee  of  Re- 
vision to  the  practice  of  medicine.  Measured  by  the  guiding  prin- 
ciple adopted  by  the  present  Committee  of  Revision,  namely,  that 
admission  to  or  retention  in  the  Pharmacopoeia  should  be  deter- 
mined by  ''therapeutic  usefulness  or  pharmaceutic  necessity,"  the 
present  report  of  the  Committee  of  Revision  is  characterized  as  being 
disappointing.  The  editorial  concludes  that  the  one  encouraging 
feature  is  that  the  tide  appears  to  have  turned  and  that  the  degen- 
eration v^hich  Dr.  Jacobi  said  was  noticeable  in  recent  revisions 
seems  to  have  been  checked,  for  a  Pharmacopoeia  constructed  on 
the  lines  foreshadowed  by  the  first  report  of  the  Executive  Com- 
mittee of  Revision  is  certainly  a  decided  improvement  over  its 
immediate  predecessor  and  should  encourage  physicians  to  renewed 
activity  and  interest. 
Prescription  Writing. — The  editor  of  the  Therapeutics  col- 
umn (/.  Am.  M.  Ass.,  1911,  v.  57,  p.  11 33)  in  an  introduction  to  a 
series  of  articles  on  prescription  writing  presents  a  number  of  sug- 
gestions that  should  be  of  value  to  the  pharmacist  who'  is  anxious 
to  improve  his  prescription  business,  also  discusses  a  number  of 
questions  that  should  be  of  interest  tO'  the  pharmacist  himself, 
from  a  professional  point  of  view.  Thus  the  following  comment 
on  the  scope  of  the  forthcoming  Pharmacopoeia  of  the  U.  S.  P.  is 
well  worth  considering  : 
''The  proper  use  of  drugs  that  have  physiologic  activities  being 
acknowledged  helpful  and  often  curative,  it  is  self-evident  that  we 
expect  and  demand  a  standard  of  strength  and  of  purity  of  such 
drugs  as  laboratory  and  clinical  determinations  have  proved  valu- 
able. Consequently  we  await  the  ninth  revision  of  the  United 
States  Pharmacopoeia  with  hope  and  faith  that  it  will  fur- 
nish the  standards  of  useful  drugs,  and  trust  that  it  will  not 
officialize  and  attempt  to  standardize  drugs  of  no  therapeutic  value 
and  of  no  '  pliarmacal  '  necessity.  A  standard  book  that  contains 
many  useless  articles  insults  its  articles  of  value  and  loses  them  in 
a  fog  of  uselessness." 
