20S REPORT ON IMPORTED ADULTERATED DRUGS. 
scanimony has passed the New York custom-house during 
the last twelve months. The so called scammony, now- 
imported, containsonly about one half the active principle 
of the genuine article; it being a combination of that drug 
and a worthless vegetable extract co-mingled with clay. 
Pure scammony is an expensive drug ; hence the object of 
its adulteration. 
Many of the medicinal gams and gum-resins imported 
are so deteriorated, or combined with earthy or other mat- 
ters, that they are not only unsafe, but worthless for medi- 
ciual purposes. 
The medicinal extracts, which are very important medical 
agents when pure, were formerly made with great care, 
and of one uniform strength, but they now come to us not 
only prepared of the refuse or inferior drugs, but also great- 
ly adulterated, &c. These worthless extracts, in external 
appearance, are well calculated to deceive — the parcels 
being as neatly put up, labelled, &c., as those of the genuine. 
They are sold by the foreignmianufacturer, on an average 
at about one-half the price of the pure article. 
In this business, as well as in the manufacture of chemi- 
cal preparations used in medicine, there has been for years 
past a regular system of fraud carried on by many of the 
foreign manufacturers. They have not only expressed 
their willingness to prepare and send out to order, any arti- 
cle in their line, adulterated to any extent desired, with a 
corresponding price, to suit, but they now, it seems, keep 
constantly on hand a supply of the adulterated, as well as 
of the pure preparations, and when remonstrated with by 
our honest importers, they excuse themselves by saying 
that *^ they must accommodate demands or lose sales, &c., as 
both qualities are ordered in large quantities from the United 
States— the genuine article, as they are given to understand, 
for the seaboard, and the adulterated for the western 
trade !" 
The blue pill mass, a vastly important and useful 
