NEW YORK COLLEGE OF PHARMACY. 
307 
extract, come from England, invoiced there from 1§ to 3 
pence sterling per pound. It is intended and used for 
powdering, colour being given to it by turmeric, &c. 
The article called oxyd of zinc on the English labels, is 
generally carbonate of zinc, being imported at a price which 
precludes the possibility of honest preparation. 
All that is received under the name of precipitated 
sulphur (or " lac sulphur," as the merchants commonly 
term it,) except when it is expressly ordered from an honor- 
able manufacturer, contains from 80 to 95 per cent, of sul- 
phate of lime. 
Opium is often invoiced at one-third the value of good 
quality, and is found upon examination not to be worth 
even that. The same may be said of scammony. 
Most of the foreign extracts are not what they profess to 
be, and cannot be relied upon in the treatment of disease. 
The salts of quinine, morphine, and all the more costly 
chemicals, are greatly adulterated. 
We are informed by the agent of an English manufac- 
turer of chemicals, extracts, and many other preparations 
used in medicine, that it is a regular and systematic busi- 
ness, carried on by his principal and others in his line, to 
make articles for the American market of different qualities, 
one for the Atlantic cities, and another, very much inferior, 
" for the west," meaning thereby our western states. He 
gives us, for instance, the following quotations : a Compound 
extracts of colocynth 9s. 6d. ; do. for the west 5s." — the 
latter, as we are allowed to infer, containing no scammony 
at all, only the poorest sort of aloes, and but little, if any, 
colocynth, or extract from it. "Blue pill 3s. 9d.: for the 
west Is. Sd." 
Is it wonderful that such enormous doses as we hear of, 
are taken, and indeed required at the west, and that disap- 
pointment everywhere is experienced by physicians in the 
action of medicines? And these examples are but few out 
of many that might be given. Our country is held an easy 
prey to the rascality of foreign counterfeiters, aided and 
