Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  j 
November,  1919.  > 
Editorial. 
705 
rather  remarkable  responsibility  and  assumption  of  authority  upon 
the  Commissioner,  who  presumably  is  not  a  medical  man,  to  de- 
•termine  what  the  medical  practitioners  of  the  country  shall  be 
permitted  to  prescribe  as  remedial  agents  or  as  vehicles  for  such 
remedies.  The  scope  of  the  Pharmacopoeia  is  limited  solely  to  sub- 
stances and  formulas  "which  are  used  for  medicinal  purposes,'' 
and  the  judgment  of  the  Committee  of  Revision  composed  of  prac- 
titioners and  scientific  workers  in  this  special  field,  should  not  be 
set  aside  by  the  precipitate  opinion  of  an  official. 
Paragraph  (b)  of  these  standards  attempts  to  define  a  medicine 
under  this  law,  that  term  not  being  defined  in  the  Act  itself.  The 
definition  given  is:  "(&)  Any  medicinal  preparation  will  be  classed 
as  a  medicine,  provided  the  same  is  unfit  for  use  as  a  beverage,  and 
contains  no  more  alcohol  than  is  necessary  for  the  purpose  of 
extraction,  solution  or  preservation,  and  contains  in  each  fluid 
ounce  a  dose  as  a  whole  or  in  compatible  combination  of  one  or 
more  agents  of  recognized  therapeutic  value,  and  contains  no  agents 
either  chemically  or  physiologically  incompatible  with  the  active 
medicinal  agents  upon  which  the  medicinal  claims  are  based."  The 
wording  of  this  paragraph  is  unfortunate.  The  adjective  "  medici- 
nal "  applied  to  a  preparation  stamps  such  as  having  the  properties 
and  uses  of  a  medicine.  A  "medicinal  preparation'"  is  incontro- 
vertibly  a  "  medicine "  and  a  declaration  of  a  department  cannot 
change  its  status.  A  medicine  is  a  medicine  as  much  as  "pigs  are 
pigs." 
Again  who  is  to  determine  which  of  the  "  agents "  are  "  of 
recognized  therapeutic  value "  ?  There  is  a  wide  diversity  of 
opinion  among  able  medical  practitioners  as  to  "therapeutic  value" 
of  many  of  the  remedial  agents  that  are  extensively  employed  and 
where  the  doctors  differ  among  themselves  would  it  be  safe  to 
accept  the  dictum  of  a  non-medical  department  ?  In  a  "  compatible 
combination"  may  not  even  the  alcohol  contained  be  one  of  the 
"  agents  of  recognized  therapeutic  value  "  ? 
When  we  stop  to  consider  the  innumerable  chemical  and  physio- 
logical incompatibilities  possible  and  the  many  times  that  either  acci- 
dentally or  intentionally  these  are  evidenced  in  the  prescriptions  of 
the  most  learned  and  skilled  physicians  we  must  conclude  that  the 
department  is  promulgating  an  impracticability  bordering  on  the 
verge  of  the  ridiculous  and  which  must,  necessarily,  be  observed 
