AmjSyrm3arm' }  International  Pharmacopoeial  Bureau.  319 
or  an  abstract  of  a  report  of  an  article.  So  each  country  becomes 
acquainted  only  with  the  works  which  appear  in  one's  own  language 
through  more  or  less  reliable  reports.  Through  this  much  valuable 
work  is  lost.  It  often  happens  that  the  same  work  is  abstracted 
two  or  three  times,  an  error  is  repeatedly  mentioned  and  must  be 
refuted  two  or  three  times.  In  this  manner  much  energy  is  un- 
profitably  consumed. 
The  practical  Americans  have  long  been  aware  of  this  part  of 
pharmacopoeial  revision  and  have  taken  means  to  overcome  it.  For 
some  time  the  Treasury  Department  Public  Health  and  Marine 
Hospital  Service  of  the  United  States  publishes  yearly  under  the 
title  Digest  of  Comments  on  the  Pharmacopoeia  of  the  United 
States  of  America,  Washington,  Government  Printing  House,  a 
short  report  of  pharmacopoeial  articles  appearing  for  the  year.  The 
references  to  the  articles  are  complete  so  far  as  the  title  is  con- 
cerned. But  the  text  is  too  short  for  one  to  obtain  all  that  is  neces- 
sary. This  institution  should  be  enlarged  upon.  But  this  can  only 
be  brought  about  by  centralizing  the  work.  This,  to  my  mind,  is 
the  first  problem  of  establishing  an  International  Pharmacopoeial 
Bureau.  If  the  different  civilized  countries  create  such  a  phar- 
macopoeial bureau  the  library  should  be  combined  of  all  the  phar- 
maceutical publications  of  the  earth,  and  in  this  bureau  regular  and 
detailed  abstracts  of  all  pharmacopoeial  articles  should  be  made  ; 
in  this  manner  a  central  office  could  do  the  same  work  and  accom- 
plish it  in  a  more  reliable  manner  than  a  dozen  different  offices 
whose  reporting  is  never  exhaustive  and  performed  in  a  trust- 
worthy manner.  These  abstracts  should  be  published  simulta- 
neously in  German,  French,  and  English,  and  given  out  in  yearly 
volumes.  Of  course,  this  would  necessitate  the  establishment  of  a 
Bureau  provided  with  two  or  three  linguists  of  sufficient  experience 
to  draw  from  the  pharmacopoeial  publications  of  the  main  countries 
in  a  uniform  and  rapid  manner  so  that  the  reports  could  appear  a 
short  time  after  the  close  of  the  year.  The  reports  should  exclude 
all  scientific  matters  which  do  not  have  a  direct  bearing  upon  phar- 
macopoeial revision.  On  the  contrary,  all  work  relating  to  drugs, 
the  establishment  of  their  identity,  methods  of  assay,  and  all  other 
data  of  like  import  should  be  worthy  of  notice. 
These  references  should  be  bound  in  volumes  of  1000  pages  each. 
But  the  abstracting  activity  should  not  be  the  only  mission  of 
this  International  Pharmacopoeial  Bureau.   A  wider  field  should  be 
