Am.  Jour.  Pharin.  ) 
February,  1909.  J 
The  Assay  of  Drugs. 
61 
the  basis  for  a  partial  solution  of  the  problem  was  available.  Per- 
ceiving a  commercial  advantage  in  the  extended  application  of 
scientific  principles,  manufacturing  pharmacists,  who  had  been  con- 
trolling the  quality  of  their  crude  drugs  to  some  extent  by  assaying, 
began  applying  the  principle  to  finished  products.  The  success  of 
this  experiment  helped  to  create  a  demand  that  assay  methods  be 
officially  recognized  by  the  Pharmacopoeia. 
The  Revision  Convention  was  very  conservative  in  respect  to  this 
innovation,  hesitating  to  sanction  methods  which,  however  satisfac- 
tory for  the  use  of  trained  chemists,  would  be  liable  to  miscarry  in 
the  hands  of  the  average  pharmacist.  Restricting  the  choice  to 
methods  supposed  to  be  within  the  capacity  of  the  latter,  a  few 
simple  assays  were  made  official.  Though  scientific  progress  and 
the  needs  of  rational  medicine  were  recognized  by  the  introduction 
into  the  last  Pharmacopoeia  of  a  considerable  number  of  assays,  the 
technical  limitations  of  pharmacists  had  a  restraining  influence  in 
the  exclusion  of  microscopic  characteristics  of  drugs  and  the 
selection  of  assay  methods.  In  regard  to  the  latter  the  committee 
was  instructed  that  assay  processes  should  be  "  reasonably  simple 
(both  as  to  methods  and  apparatus  required)  and  lead  to  fairly 
uniform  results  in  different  hands." 
The  methods  adopted  were  the  consummation  of  protracted  and 
painstaking  labors  by  a  group  of  the  most  competent  experts  in  the 
country,  and,  on  the  whole,  fairly  represented  the  existing  status  of 
this  branch  of  chemical  analysis.  Some  of  the  most  important 
defects  have  since  been  remedied. 
Though  the  Pharmacopoeia  had  been  recognized  to  some  extent 
in  legislation,  its  authority  was  chiefly  moral  until  the  passage  of 
the  National  Food  and  Drugs  Act  of  1906.  The  probability  being 
somewhat  vague  that  its  standards  and  methods  would  be^made  the 
basis  for  general  legal  regulation,  a  fairly  high  degree  of  accuracy 
appeared  less  important  than  it  does  under  the  altered  conditions. 
For  example,  there  was  no  requirement  that  the  assay  methods  give 
correct  or  approximately  correct  results. 
It  is  necessary  now  to  ascertain  how  these  methods,  upon  which 
an  official  status  has  been  conferred,  will  respond  to  the  requirements 
of  the  official  chemist  and  prospective  witness  before  the  courts. 
Before  the  passage  of  the  Food  and  Drugs  Act  the  Association 
of  Official  Agriculture  Chemists  had  begun  a  cooperative  study  of 
analytical  methods  for  crude  plant  drugs  under  Dr.  L.  F.  Kebler  as 
