b66 
Synthetic  Chemical  Industry 
5  Am.  Jour,  Pharin. 
I       Oct.,  1921. 
cleaned  out  of  its  encumbrance  and  relieved  of  all  worry  as  to  the 
disposition  of  any  such  future  accumulation  of  worthless  by-product. 
We  are  not  enthusiastic  about  the  correctness  of  the  foregoing 
premise,  but  correct  or  not,  it  most  certainly  carries  the  message 
with  it  that  America  was  a  profitable  dumping  ground  for  an  end- 
less array  of  worthless  therapeutic  agents  of  this  type,  whose  vogue 
ran  parallel  with  the  extensiveness  and  intensiveness  of  their  adver- 
tising and  soliciting  campaigns. 
The  war,  however,  closed  the  ways  to  all  of  these  synthetics, 
good  and  spurious  alike,  and  America,  who  had  given  the  Germans 
and  others  an  unopposed  right  of  way  in  the  manufacture  and  ex- 
ploitation of  such  remedies  found  itself  denied  of  many  articles  of 
real  therapeutic  merit.  So  great  had  been  our  dependence  and  so 
complete  our  indifference  that  during  the  early  part  of  the  war 
such  common  substances  as  acetphenetidin,  antipyrin,  resorcinol, 
acetanilid  and  hydroquinone  were  marketed  at  ridiculously  high 
prices  and  much  distress  was  occasioned  through  the  scarcity  of 
other  products  of  marked  remedial  value,  such  as  arsphenamine  and 
diethylbarbituric  acid.  American  enterprise  soon  found  a  way  out, 
however,  and  both  in  the  matter  of  synthetic  drugs  and  dyes  quickly 
approached  a  season  when  independence  of  Germany  was  an  assured 
fact.  Quite  naturally  our  joining  in  the  fray  made  more  insistent 
demands  upon  our  industries  and  particularly  upon  the  chemical 
industry  which  bore  the  burden  of  the  work  of  supplying  the  high 
explosives  and  warfare  gases.  Indeed  so  great  was  this  demand 
that  the  infant  synthetic  chemical  industry  quickly  grew  to  a  healthy 
condition.  Augmented  by  those  other  factors  the  drug  supply  soon 
became  large  enough  to  supply  the  demand  and  prices  reached  a 
scale  lower  than  ever  before,  particularly  the  prices  of  many  of  the 
synthetic  patented  drug  products,  the  sale  of  which  had  previously 
been  a  German  monopoly. 
It  is  granted,  of  course,  that  the  infant  industry  waxed  strong1 
and  hearty  in  the  absence  of  active  competition.  Now,  however,  the 
ratification  of  peace  with  Germany,  where  most  of  these  synthetics 
had  their  origin  finds  that  country  making  ready  to  bid  again  for  a 
market  for  both  their  good  and  bad  products. 
This  is  where  our  infant  industry  may  find  its  agent  of  destruc- 
tion unless  the  antitoxin  of  encouragement  be  used  to  combat  this 
factor.    This  country  should  undoubtedly  provide  for  the  manufac- 
