A°\uSimn"}        Capture  of  the  Pharmacopoeia.  387 
ing  abuses  of  the  college  methods  to  go  on  for  many  years.  The 
colleges  received  students  insufficiently  prepared  and  graduated 
them  without  sufficient  instruction ;  not  in  a  few  instances,  but  by 
thousands.  A  few  persons  saw  the  dangers  of  the  college  methods 
as  a  few  doctors  have  seen  the  duty  of  the  profession  in  regard  to 
the  Pharmacopoeia.  Much  has  been  at  last  accomplished  in  medical 
education  due  almost  entirely  to  the  efforts  of  the  regular  medical 
profession,  for  the  irregular  schools  have  never  done  anything  revo- 
lutionary in  this  respect ;  they  have  followed,  not  led,  the  movement. 
I  have  made  part  of  my  title  "  the  recapture  "  of  the  Pharma- 
copoeia ;  but  I  am  not  of  the  opinion  that  the  control  of  the  pharma- 
cist has  been  necessarily  to  the  disadvantage  of  revision.  What 
course  matters  would  have  taken  if  the  medical  profession  had  con- 
tinued in  absolute  control  cannot  now  be  determined ;  but  it  is  a 
condition  that  now  confronts  us,  not  a  theory.  The  work  is,  I  th'nk, 
unnecessarily  cumbersome  and  contains  a  good  deal  of  unnecessary 
matter,  but  it  is  the  object  of  this  essay  to  look  ahead,  not  backward 
It  is,  in  my  opinion,  now  time  to  make  the  United  States  Phar- 
macopoeia a  national  work  in  the  full  sense  of  that  expression.  We 
live  in  a  very  different  world  from  that  in  which  the  book  had  its 
origin.  The  little  band  of  doctors  that  met  in  Washington  on  New 
Year's  day,  1820,  in  the  hot  youth  of  the  Republic,  when  George  III 
was  King  and  James  Monroe  President,  would  have  been  shocked 
to  hear  that  a  time  would  come  when  Congress  would  make  a  law 
establishing  the  provisions  of  the  Pharmacopoeia  as  a  legal  standard. 
They  would  have  regarded  such  a  drift  toward  centralization  as  a 
blow  to  republican  institutions  and  in  destruction  of  American  lib- 
erty. We  moderns  feel  no  such  alarm,  recognizing  that  all  the 
steps  toward  a  better  union  are  over  the  ruins  of  State  individualism. 
Now  that  penal  enactments  give  the  requirements  of  the  Pharma- 
copoeia the  force  of  law  it  is  but  wise  and  just  that  the  framing 
of  these  requirements  should  be  carried  out  under  official  sanction. 
The  United  States  Government  should  summon  the  convention  and 
provide  for  the  expenses  of  the  delegates.  There  is  no  need  for 
the  numerous  attendance  that  has  become  customary  of  late  years. 
There  is  no  reason  that  every  college  and  society  of  pharmacy  and 
medicine  should  be  authorized  to  send  accredited  delegates.  The 
work  of  the  last  revision  was  done  by  a  few  men,  not  more  than 
twenty-six  authorized  persons  in  all,  and  from  what  I  have  learned 
in  a  very  large  experience  of  committees,  boards,  and  commissions, 
