388 
Capture  of  the  Pharmacopoeia. 
f  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
\     August,  1909. 
I  feel  inclined  to  say  that  if  the  minutes  of  the  revision  committee 
were  published,  it  would  be  found  that  a  few  competent  and  active 
spirits  did  most  of  the  work  and  determined  the  main  lines  of  policy. 
If  the  American  Medical  Association  and  the  American  Pharma- 
ceutical Society  were  each  authorized  to  send,  say,  ten  delegates, 
and  the  medical  departments  of  the  Army,  Navy  and  Marine-Hos- 
pital Service  each,  say,  three  delegates,  a  convention  could  be  held 
fully  as  representative  as  any  that  has  ever  assembled  for  such  a 
purpose.  The  publication  should  be  carried  out  by  the  United 
States  Government.  A  Committee  of  Revision  should  be  designated 
which  would  have  power  to  make  necessary  changes  in  the  interval 
between  revisions.  Revisions  should  be  once  in  five  years.  The 
decennial  revision  satisfied  the  conditions  of  1820,  but  progress  in 
pharmacy  and  medicine  is  too  rapid  now  for  such  a  long  interval. 
The  preparation  of  the  revision  should  not  occupy  over  one  year. 
The  circumstances  that  attended  the  publication  of  the  last  revision, 
namely,  that  it  took  five  years  to  finish,  are  wholly  inconsistent  with 
the  principle  011  which  such  a  work  is  published. 
During  the  preparation  of  the  revision  the  work  should  be 
brought  before  the  public  for  discussion  through  publication  of  the 
more  important  suggested  changes  in  the  leading  medical  and  phar- 
maceutic journals.  In  this  manner  important  criticism  will  be 
available,  some  errors  and  inconsistencies  would  be  avoided  and  no 
injury  would  be  done  to  any  one.  I  think  that  the  size  of  the  book 
could  be  materially  reduced,  without  interfering  with  its  usefulness 
in  the  field  for  which  it  is  intended.  Many  of  the  analytic  processes 
could  be  included  in  special  bulletins  as  is  now  done  in  food  analysis 
work,  and  to  these  the  special  workers  could  refer. 
A  work  that  determines  the  conditions  on  which  criminal  pro- 
ceedings are  brought  should  originate  and  be  controlled  by  official 
authority,  not  by  private  management.  The  framers  of  the  current 
revision  recognized  that  the  book  had  become  a  danger  in  this 
respect  and  placed  in  it  a  formal  statement  that  it  is  a  standard  for 
drugs  and  not  for  foods.  Under  the  sanction  and  control  of  the 
general  government,  the  book  will  become  in  reality  the  "  United 
States  Pharmacopoeia." 
