Revision  of  the  Pharmacopoeia.      { Am^™st  roSf' 
1919. 
Pharmacopceial  Standards. 
The  pharmacopoeia  has  been  styled  as  a  "book  of  standards." 
This  is  not  its  entire  scope.  Officially  the  British  Pharmacopoeia 
declares  its  object  to  be  "to  afford  to  the  members  of  the  medical 
profession  and  those  engaged  in  the  preparation  of  medicines,  one 
uniform  standard  and  guide  whereby,  the  nature  and  composition  of 
substances  to  be  used  in  medicines  may  be  ascertained  and  deter- 
mined." 
The  chief  object  of  the  pharmacopoeia  under  this  definition  is  to 
insure  uniformity  in  medical-  substances. 
According  to  Charles  Rice,  the  term  "  standards "  applied  to 
pharmacopceial  preparations,  comprises  three  distinct  features : 
Quantitative  determination  of  the  active  principles,  identification 
of  the  active  principles,  adjustment  of  strength. 
He  believed  that  standards  need  only  be  applied  to  drugs  of  im- 
portance and  potency. 
The  convention  of  1900  adopted  what  is  known  as  the  "purity 
rubric/'  which  rubric  declared  the  percentage  of  pure  substances, 
and  the  limit  of  the  inactive  impurities  permitted.  This  rubric  was 
intended  to  apply  to  the  articles  contained  in  the  pharmacopoeia  only 
when  used  for  medicinal  purposes,  allowing  articles  used  for  tech- 
nical purposes,  or  in  the  arts,  to  vary  from  the  standard  in  the 
pharmacopoeia. 
The  drug  inspector  and  the  customs  house  officer  are  mainly  in- 
terested in  the  standards  as  defined  in  the  pharmacopoeia,  and  for 
them  the  more  rigid  and  the  more  technical  the  better.  The  drug 
broker  and  the  patent  medicine  man  would  prefer  standards  of 
maximum  elasticity. 
It  has  been  urged  in  respect  to  the  descriptions  and  standards 
for  drugs  of  botanical  origin,  that  they  were  too  finely  drawn.  We 
may  certainly  contend  that  under  the  stress  of  war,  and  in  the  face 
of  a  scarcity,  amounting  almost  to  a  famine  of  certain  drugs,  the 
pharmacopceial  requirement  that  drugs  must  be  that  of  a  given 
country's  origin,  or  in  other  cases  could  not  be  used  because  they 
contained  too  large  a  percentage  of  an  unofficial  portion  of  the  same 
plant,  or  were  not  of  the  specified  period  of  growth,  our  pharma- 
copoeial  standards  were  unnecessarily  rigid. 
By  all  means,  we  may  at  this  time  urge  that  our  standards  be  so 
arranged  that  American  grown  drugs  upon  which  so  much  sacrifice 
