Am.  Jour.  Pharra.  \ 
August,  1901.  J 
International  Congresses. 
375 
memoir  and  a  draft  of  an  international  pharmacopoeia.  Such  a  one 
should  not  exclude  national  pharmacopoeias,  but  the  former  one 
should  serve  as  a  standard  in  their  revision  so  as  to  attain  in  the 
course  of  time  as  much  as  possible  to  a  uniformity  of  all  or  the 
most  commonly  used  medical  preparations,  particularely  the  more 
potent  ones,  as  also  to  a  uniform  nomenclature  and  the  general 
adoption  of  metric  units  and  the  use  of  the  Latin  language  for  the 
pharmacopoeias. 
A  committee  was  appointed  for  examining  the  French  elaboration 
and  eventually  for  drafting  a  new  one.  The  report  should  subse- 
quently be  sent  to  the  Pharmaceutical  Society  of  St.  Petersburg 
before  or  by  December,  1875.  This  should  have  the  revised  draft 
printed  and  send  copies  to  the  pharmaceutical  societies  represented 
at  the  present  congress  for  revision  and  approval  in  time  before  the 
next  congress. 
The  following  suggestions  were  recommended  to  this  committee 
for  consideration :  The  language  of  the  international  pharmacopoeia 
should  be  the  Latin,  as  determined  at  the  preceding  congresses  at 
Paris  and  Vienna.  Metric  weights  and  measures  should  be  used 
where  absolute  quantities  are  required  ;  but  in  pharmaceutical  prepa- 
rations parts  by  weight  or  volume  might  be  used.  All  temperatures 
should  be  stated  in  the  centigrade  scale,  and  specific  gravities  at  150 
C.  The  nomenclature  of  chemicals  should  be  as  simple  and  defi- 
nite as  possible.  The  minimum  of  active  principle  of  narcotic  drugs 
permitted  should  be  stated.  Tinctures  and  other  galenicals  should 
be  made  on  one  principle  with  the  greatest  simplicity,  avoiding 
unnecessary  ingredients.  In  chemical  preparations  the  maximum 
of  impurities  allowed  should  be  stated. 
At  the  close  of  the  Congress  the  invitation  from  the  American 
Pharmaceutical  Association*  for  holding  the  fifth  Congress  in  Phila- 
delphia was  read,  but  in  no  way  acted  upon.  A  subsequent  pre- 
liminary invitation  by  the  British  delegates  present  to  hold  the 
meeting  in  London  prevailed,  subject,  however,  to  a  forthcoming 
official  invitation  by  the  Council  of  the  Pharmaceutical  Society  of 
Great  Britain. |    It  was  furthermore  resolved  upon  that  the  fifth 
*Page  324. 
t  This  invitation  was  unanimously  adopted  and  acted  upon  by  the  Council  on 
October  7,  1874  {Pharm.  Jour,  and  Transactions,  1875,  p.  285). 
