THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY 
AUGUST,  1905. 
A  REVIEW  OF  THE  EIGHTH  DECENNIAL  REVISION 
OF  THE  PHARMACOPOEIA  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 
OF  AMERICA. 
By  M.  I.  Wilbkrt, 
Apothecary  at  the  German  Hospital,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 
The  long  delayed,  and  anxiously  awaited,  eighth  decennial  revision 
of  the  Pharmacopoeia  of  the  United  States  of  America  has  finally 
been  published,  and,  according  to  a  decree  imprinted  on  the  title- 
page  of  the  book,  is  to  be  the  official  authority  on  all  matters 
pharmaceutic  on  and  after  the  first  day  of  September,  1905. 
As  an  appropriate  introduction  to  a  review  that  will  be  limited, 
as  much  as  possible,  to  a  comparison  of  the  changes  that  have  been 
made,  with  the  general  principles  involved  in  the  instructions  given 
the  revision  committee  by  the  National  Convention  of  1900,  it  may 
be  permissible  to  quote  the  introduction  to  a  somewhat  similar 
review,  printed  in  this  Journal  seventy-five  years  ago  (A.  J.  P., 
Vol.  II,  page  316),  on  the  occasion  of  the  publication  of  the  first 
revision  of  the  Pharmacopoeia  of  the  United  States  of  America,  in 
the  city  of  New  York,  in  1 830. 
The  review  itself  is  unsigned,  but  was  probably  written  by  the 
editor,  Dr.  Benjamin  Ellis,  at  that  time  the  Professor  of  Materia 
Medica  and  Pharmacy  in  the  Philadelphia  College  of  Pharmacy. 
He  says : 
If  there  be  any  department  of  learning  in  which  a  spirit  of  severe  criticism 
may  be  laudably  indulged  it  is  in  the  examination  of  such  a  work  as  a  Pharma- 
copoeia. The  preparation  of  a  "code  of  medicines  "  is,  in  the  present  state  of 
science,  a  task  requiring  microscopical  minuteness  of  research,  accurate  learn- 
ing, and  extensive  practical  knowledge.  Kurope  may  be  said  to  abound  in 
Pharmacopoeias  of  great  merit,  suited  to  the  uses  of  particular  districts.  Bach 
(350 
