Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  j 
July,  1909.  f 
Book  Reviews. 
353 
international  importance,  and  in  1906  the  director  of  the  institute, 
Dr.  H.  Thorns,  was  elected  a  corresponding  member  of  the  Council 
on  Pharmacy  and  Chemistry  of  the  American  Medical  Association. 
In  addition  to  this  evidence  of  appreciation  of  the  activities  of  the 
institute,  by  American  physicians,  individuals,  associations,  and  even 
government  officials  in  all  parts  of  Europe  have  followed  the  work 
with  interest  and  are  beginning  to  look  to  the  Pharmaceutical  Insti- 
tute as  a  source  of  reliable  information  regarding  the  composition 
and  properties  of  new  remedies  of  all  kinds. 
As  might  be  expected,  the  institute  and  the  men  engaged  in 
the  work  have  been  vigorously  attacked  and  maligned  by  the  manu- 
facturers of  the  secret  or  fake  remedies  that  have  been  exposed. 
These  exposures  that,  as  has  been  pointed  out  before,  have  been 
made  at  the  instance  of  the  German  Apothecaries  Society,  have  again 
demonstrated  that  the  composition  of  many  of  the  proprietary 
articles  now  on  the  market  is  quite  different  from  that  indicated  by 
the  claims  made  for  them  by  the  manufacturers,  and  have  also 
served  to  show  anew  that  manufacturers  of  nostrums  not  infre- 
quently vary  the  composition  of  their  preparations  at  will. 
In  addition  to  the  chemical  work  that  has  been  done  in  connection 
with  new  remedies  and  the  investigation  of  various  chemical  prob- 
lems, comprehensive  experiments  in  drug  cultivation  have  been 
instituted.  For  several  years  experiments  have  been  conducted  in 
the  cultivation  of  the  poppy  plant,  for  the  production  of  opium  and 
opium  alkaloids.  In  this  connection  Turkish  and  Persian,  as  well  as 
a  number  of  hybrid  German,  poppy  plants  were  experimented  with. 
The  effect  of  various  nitrogen-containing  fertilizers  on  the  alkaloidal 
content  of  the  poppy  plant  has  also  been  studied,  and  the  completed 
studies,  to  appear  in  a  future  annual,  will  no  doubt  prove  interesting 
and  valuable  as  a  contribution  to  our  knowledge  of  alkaloid  yielding 
drugs. 
The  experimental  grounds  include  a  total  of  5000  square  metres 
largely,  if  not  entirely,  devoted  to  the  cultivation  of  medicinal  plants 
and  the  study  of  the  effect  of  various  fertilizers  on  the  composition 
of  these  plants. 
With  such  a  variety  of  activities  it  might  well  be  expected  that 
the  annual  reports  of  the  work  should  be  unusually  interesting. 
The  two  volumes  now  before  us  contain  81  and  89  contributions 
respectively,  and  the  material  presented  covers  a  variety  of  subjects 
varying  from  an  elaboration  of  identity  tests  for  legitimate  new 
