AlA^srt.f906.rru"}  Eighth  Decennial  Revision  of  Pharmacopoeia.  355 
Some  Pharmacopceial  Problems. — As  a  fitting  prologue  to  the 
revision  of  the  Pharmacopoeia  of  1890,  the  then  chairman  of  the 
Committee  on  Revision,  Dr.  Charles  Rice,  contributed  a  paper  on 
the  subject  of  pharmacopceial  problems  to  this  Journal  (A.  J.  P., 
1899,  page  558).  In  this  paper  Dr.  Rice  outlined  what  to  him  ap- 
peared to  be  problems  of  sufficient  interest  to  be  worthy  of  general 
discussion.  The  innovations  and  additions  that  were  suggested  by 
him,  in  this  particular  paper,  were  practically  all  adopted,  so  that 
much  of  what  is  new  in  the  present  Pharmacopoeia  may  be  directly 
traced  to  the  foresight  and  suggestions  of  the  late  chairman  of  the 
Committee  on  Revision. 
The  absence  of  several  of  the  distinctive  features  of  the  earlier 
Pharmacopoeias,  particularly  the  omission  of  the  list  of  preparations 
in  connection  with  official  drugs,  will  be  a  marked  disappointment 
to  many  and  will  do  much  to  detract  from  the  value  of  some  of  the 
new  additions. 
In  discussing  the  uses  that  the  medical  profession  might  have  for 
a  pharmacopoeia,  Dr.  Rice,  in  the  paper  quoted  above,  says : 
"The  main  objects  which  a  physician  usually  has,  or  would  have, 
for  consulting  a  pharmacopoeia  are  to  ascertain: 
"  (1)  What  form  or  forms  of  administration  are  officially  available 
in  the  case  of  a  certain  drug  ? 
"  (2)  What  is  the  strength  of  the  respective  preparations  ? 
"  (3)  What  are  the  ordinary  doses  ?  " 
In  the  sixth  and  seventh  decennial  revisions  a  physician  could 
readily  find  an  answer  to  the  first  two  questions  but  not  to  the  third. 
In  the  present,  eighth  decennial,  revision  the  answer  to  the  third 
question  is  supplied,  but  the  information  formerly  included  as  an 
answer  to  the  first,  and  really  most  important,  of  these  questions 
has  been  entirely  omitted. 
The  omission  is  all  the  more  unfortunate  as  the  Committee  on 
Revision  offers  no  adequate  substitute  and  does  not  even  mention 
why  the  lists  of  preparations,  formerly  included,  have  been  so  un- 
ceremoniously dropped. 
In  addition  to  being  a  readily  accessible  and  generally  reliable 
source  of  information  for  the  physician,  these  lists  of  preparations 
were  also  of  considerable  interest  to  the  pharmacist  as  a  readily- 
referred-to  guide  to  the  official  preparations  of  any  particular  drug. 
To  the  student,  these  lists  were  especially  valuable,  as  they  enabled 
