EDITORIAL. 
83 
the  adulteration  of  drugs,  etc.  This  committee  having  invited  the  Phila- 
delphia College  of  Pharmacy  to  appoint  a  similar  committee  to  co-operate 
in  the  same  object,  that  body  responded  by  the  appointment  ©f  Messrs. 
Procter,  Parrish,  Maisch,  Taylor  and  Bullock.  The  joint  committee  on 
their  first  meeting  determined  to  invite  the  College  of  Physicians  of 
Philadelphia  to  take  part  in  the  work,  which  being  acceded  to,  that 
College  appointed  Doctors  Carson,  Ruschenberger,  Ashurst,  E.  Harts- 
horne  and  T.  H.  Bache.  Subsequently,  at  the  meeting  of  the  State 
Medical  Society,  that  body  also  appointed  a  committee,  consisting  of 
Doctors  Nebinger,  Mayburry,  Cummisky,  Knight  and  W.  L.  Wells. 
This  joint  committee  have  met  from  time  to  time,  and  have  discussed 
the  business  referred  to  them,  more  especially  in  relation  to  the  necessity 
of  a  law  to  restrain  and  punish  drug  adulteration,  and  of  an  inspector  to 
see  it  carried  into  effect.  The  pharmaceutists,  having  been  invited  by 
the  physicians,  desired  to  know  on  what  grounds  their  medical  friends 
founded  the  necessity  for  such  a  law,  and,  on  hearing  the  statements 
upon  which  it  was  based,  took  the  ground  that  as  regarded  foreign  drugs 
no  such  necessity  existed,  the  government  inspection  at  the  ports  of  entry 
having  to  a  large  extent  excluded  the  low  grade  of  drugs  formerly  im- 
ported. In  regard  to  the  alleged  deviations  from  the  Pharmacopoeia  in 
making  standard  medicines  by  apothecaries,  druggists,  and  manufacturing 
pharmaceutists,  it  was  admitted  that  such  deviations  did  exist,  and  that 
want  of  uniformity  was  a  great  evil,  arising  from  various  causes,  but 
chiefly  from  the  attempts  of  manufacturers  to  produce  these  preparations 
by  processes  and  formulae  less  expensive  than  those  of  the  National  Code. 
They  believed  that  the  first  duty  of  physicians  and  apothecaries  was  to 
make  the  National  Code  a  true  exposition  of  the  present  state  of  the 
pharmaceutic  art,  and  in  its  materia  medica  to  accord  with  the  demands  of 
the  medical  profession  in  all  parts  of  the  country.  Then  to  insist  on  its  re- 
cognition by  physicians,  pharmaceutists  and  druggists.  They  did  not  think 
an  inspector  of  drugs  and  medicines  could  possibly  meet  the  difficulty,  as, 
independent  of  the  impossibility  of  analysing  Galenical  medicines  success- 
fully, it  would  involve  so  much  time  as  to  require  an  hundred  inspectors 
for  the  State  to  carry  out  the  law.  They  (the  pharmaceutists)  therefore 
advocated  measures  tending  to  raise  the  status  of  pharmacy,  and  to  con- 
fine its  practice  to  qualified  persons,  by  urging  a  law  based  on  qualifica- 
tion sustained  by  registration.  They  also  were  willing  to  have  a  law 
making  the  adulteration  of  drugs  and  medicines  a  misdemeanor,  provided 
it  was  to  be  carried  out  t)y  the  Courts  through  the  aid  of  qualified  and 
recognized  experts,  and  not  by  the  mere  ipse  dixit  of  informers,  medical 
and  otherwise. 
The  physicians  of  the  joint  committee,  except  in  a  very  few  instances, 
were  not  prepared  to  sustain  the  grave  charges  which  a  committee  of  the 
State  Medical  Society  had  made  last  winter  to  the  Legislature,  on  the 
occasion  of  memorializing  that  body  for  a  law  with  an  inspectorship  ;  and, 
