78 
Adulterations  in  Drugs. 
i  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
1    February,  1901. 
as  to  success,  and  should  never  relax  its  efforts  until  the  bill  has  re- 
ceived the  signatures  of  the  officers  of  the  last  house  through  which 
it  passed. 
When  a  pharmacist  produces  a  new  formula  he  must  expect  the 
question,  "What  evidence  have  you  that  your  formula  will  work  ?" 
and  the  same  question  may  properly  be  asked  concerning  the  plan 
proposed  by  the  present  paper.  The  answer  is  that  it  has  had  a 
practical  trial  and  has  been  eminently  successful.  For  years  the 
pharmacists  of  Ohio  tried  in  the  usual  desultory  fashion  to  procure 
an  amendment  of  their  pharmacy  law,  meeting  with  worse  defeat 
at  each  succeeding  session  of  the  legislature.  Three  years  ago  a 
new  attempt  was  made.  The  program  which  has  just  been  out- 
lined was  followed  in  detail,  beginning  with  a  special  session  of  the 
State  Association  to  consider  the  draft  of  the  proposed  law,  and 
followed  by  constant  and  systematic  work  on  the  part  of  the  com- 
mittee on  legislation.  Not  a  cent  of  money  was  spent  in  the  legis- 
lature or  with  the  newspapers,  and  although  the  measure  was 
more  bitterly  fought  than  any  of  its  predecessors,  it  passed  both 
branches  of  the  General  Assembly  without  the  change  of  so  much 
as  a  punctuation  point. 
From  the  experience  gained  in  that  and  other  contests,  the  writer 
is  convinced  that,  given  a  good  draft  of  a  law,  a  good  committee 
on  legislation,  and  systematic  work  along  the  lines  which  have  been 
indicated,  a  pharmacy  law  can  be  passed  in  any  State  in  the  Union, 
or  at  least  that  a  failure  to  secure  its  enactment  would  be  due  to 
extraordinary  and  very  unusual  conditions. 
THE  DETECTION  OF  ADULTERATIONS  IN  DRUGS  BY 
MEANS  OF  THE  X-RAYS. 
BY  M.  I.  WlIvBERT. 
It  is  well  known  that  different  substances  are  more  or  less  opaque 
to  the  X-rays.  This  opacity  is  apparently  due  to  the  difference  in 
the  atomic  weight  of  the  elements  entering  into  the  composition  of 
the  particular  substance  under  observation.  We  consequently  find 
that  materials  having  a  low  atomic  weight  offer  little  or  no  resis- 
tance to  these  rays,  while  other  articles,  composed  of  elements  of 
high  atomic  weight,  are  nearly,  if  not  entirely,  opaque. 
If  we  take,  for  example,  equal  parts  by  weight  of  lithium,  sodium, 
