216 REPORT ON IMPORTED ADULTERATED DRUGS. 
as may be supposed, they differ greatly in strength and price. 
Considerable quantities are shipped to this country after 
having had the active portion extracted for the purpose of 
manufacturing extracts of bark. The best article is im- 
ported or purchased for the manufacture of quinine ; the 
other for powdering. It comes invoiced from five cents to 
one dollar per pound, according to the place of purchase 
and the quality of the bark. Peruvian hark, fit to be used 
in medicine, can only be bought at the place where pro- 
duced, at from thirty-five to seventy and eighty cents per 
pound. 
No pure Aleppo scammony has for a long time been im- 
ported through the New York custom-house, because the 
article inferior in strength and purity has taken its place in 
the market. The Smyrna scammony is always adulterated 
with some worthless vegetable extract, flour, ashes and clay. 
An article called Smyrna scammony (and a fair imitation) 
is occasionally ipjported, which has proved to be a combi- 
nation of jalap, gamboge, chalk, gum Senegal and ivory 
black, without a panicle of real scammony in its compo- 
sition. 
Thousands of pounds of worthless rhubarb root are sent 
out annually to this country for a market, by foreign specu- 
lators, principally from England. London being the greatest 
drug market in the world, it is but reasonable to suppose 
that large quantities of crude drugs, of a greatly deteriorated 
and inferior quality, must necessarily be constantly accu- 
mulating in their warehouses, which, on account of the 
long existing laws of that country, cannot find a home 
market, and, in consequence, must either be destroyed or 
exported to some place where there is no law to prevent 
their introduction. The article of rhubarb I have alluded 
to, is found, on examination, to be either greatly deterio- 
rated by age, or as having been deprived of its medicinal 
virtues by decoction for the purpose (as with the Peruvian 
bark above named) of manufacturing extracts. 
