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Rh was adopted, and in 1815 a corrected impression of the same was issued. Subsequent editions were published in 1824, 1836 and 1851.

The first Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia was published in 1699 and the last in 1841, the first Dublin Pharmacopoeia in 1807 and the last in 1850.

The preparations contained in these three pharmacopoeias were not all uniform in strength, a source of much inconvenience and danger to the public, when powerful preparations such as dilute hydrocyanic acid were ordered in the one country and dispensed according to the national pharmacopoeia in another. In consequence of this inconvenience the Medical Act of 1858 ordained that the General Medical Council should cause to be published a book containing a list of medicines and compounds, to be called the British Pharmacopoeia, which should be a substitute throughout Great Britain and Ireland for the separate pharmacopoeias. Hitherto these had been published in Latin. The first British Pharmacopoeia was published in the English language in 1864, but gave such general dissatisfaction both to the medical profession and to chemists and druggists that the General Medical Council brought out a new and amended edition in 1867. This dissatisfaction was probably owing partly to the fact that the majority of the compilers of the work were not engaged in the practice of pharmacy, and therefore competent rather to decide upon the kind of preparations required than upon the method of their manufacture. The necessity for this element in the construction of a pharmacopoeia is now fully recognized in other countries, in most of which pharmaceutical chemists are represented on the committee for the preparation of the legally recognized manuals.

National pharmacopoeias now exist in the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Chile, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Holland, Hungary, India, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Italy, Switzerland, the United States of America and Venezuela. All the above-mentioned were issued under the authority of government, and their instructions have the force of law in their respective countries, except that of the United States, which was prepared by commissioners appointed by medical and pharmaceutical societies, and has no other authority, although generally accepted as the national textbook.

The French Codex has probably a more extended use than any other pharmacopoeia outside its own country, being, in connexion with Dorvault’s L’Officine, the standard for druggists in a large portion of Central and South America; it is also official in Turkey. The sum-total of the drugs and preparations it contains is about 1250, or double the average of other modern pharmacopoeias. The progress of medical knowledge has led to a gradual but very perceptible alteration in the contents of the pharmacopoeias. The original very complex formulae have been simplifier until only the most active ingredients have been retained, and in many cases the active principles have to a large extent replaced the crude drugs from which they were derived. From time to time such secret remedies of druggists or physicians as have met with popular or professional approval have been represented by simpler official preparations.

The rapid increase in medical and pharmaceutical knowledge renders necessary frequent new editions of the national pharmacopoeias, the office of which is to furnish definite formulae for reparations that have already come into extensive use in medical practice, so as to ensure uniformity of strength, and to give the characters and tests by which their purity and potency may be determined. But each new edition requires several years to carry out numerous experiments for devising suitable formulae, so that the current Pharmacopoeia can never be quite up to date. This difficulty has hitherto been met by the publication of such nonofficial formularies as Squire’s Companion to the Pharmacopoeia and Martindale’s Extra Pharmacopoeia, in which all new remedies and their preparations, uses and doses are recorded, and in the former the varying strengths of the same preparations in the different pharmacopoeias are also compared. The need of such works to supplement the Pharmacopoeia is shown by the fact that they are even more largely used than the Pharmacopoeia itself, the first having been issued in 18 and the second in 13 editions at comparatively short intervals. In England the task of elaborating 11 new Pharmacopoeia is entrusted to a body of a purely medical character, and legally the pharmacist has not, as in other countries, a voice in the matter, notwithstanding the fact that, although the medical practitioner is naturally the best judge of the drug or preparations that will afford the best therapeutic result, he is not so competent as the pharmacist to say how that preparation can be produced in the most effective and satisfactory manner, nor how the purity of drugs can be tested. In the preparation of the fourth edition of the British Pharmacopoeia in 1898 some new departures were made. A committee of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain was appointed at the request of the General Medical Council to advise on pharmaceutical matters and the valuable assistance rendered by it is acknowledged in the preface of that work. A census of prescriptions was taken to ascertain the relative frequency with which different preparations and drugs were used in prescriptions, and suggestions and criticisms were sought from various medical and pharmaceutical bodies at home and in the colonies. As regards the purely pharmaceutical part of the work a committee of reference in pharmacy, nominated by the pharmaceutical societies of Great Britain and Ireland, was appointed to report to the Pharmacopoeia Committee of the Medical Council.

Some difficulty has arisen since the passing of the Adulteration of Food and Drugs Act concerning the use of the Pharmacopoeia as a legal standard for the drugs and preparations contained in it. The Pharmacopoeia is defined in the preface as only “intended to afford to the members of the medical profession and those engaged in the preparation of medicines throughout the British Empire one uniform standard and guide whereby the nature and composition of substances to be used in medicine may be ascertained and determined.” It is obvious that it cannot be an encyclopaedia of substances used in medicine, and can only be used as a standard for the substances and reparations contained in it, and for no others. It has been held in the Divisional Courts (Dickins v. Randerson) that the Pharmacopoeia is a standard for official preparations asked for under their pharmacopoeia name. But there are many substances in the Pharmacopoeia which are not only employed in medicine, but have other uses, such as sulphur, benzoin, tragacanth, gum arabic, ammonium carbonate, beeswax, oil of turpentine, linseed oil, and for these a commercial standard of purity as distinct from a medicinal one is needed, since the preparations used in medicine should be of the highest possible degree of purity obtainable, and this standard would be too high and too expensive for ordinary purposes. The use of trade synonyms in the Pharmacopoeia, such as saltpetre for purified potassium nitrate, and milk of sulphur for precipitated sulphur, is partly answerable for this difficulty, and has proved to be a mistake, since it affords ground for legal prosecution if a chemist sells a drug of ordinary commercial purity for trade purposes, instead of the purified preparation which is official in the Pharmacopoeia for medicinal use. This would not be the case if the trade synonym were omitted. For many drugs and chemicals not in the Pharmacopoeia there is no standard of purity that can be used under the Adulteration of Food and Drugs Act, and for these, as well as for the commercial quality of those drugs and essential oils which are also in the Pharmacopoeia, a legal standard of commercial purity is much needed. This subject formed the basis of discussion at several meetings of the Pharmaceutical Society, and the results have been embodied in a work entitled Suggested Standards for Foods and Drugs, by C. G. Moor, which indicates the average degree of purity of many drugs and chemicals used in the arts, as well as the highest degree of purity obtainable in commerce of those used in medicine.

An important step has also been taken in this direction by the publication under the authority of the Council of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain of the British Pharmaceutical Codex, in which the characters of and tests for the purity of many non-official drugs and preparations are given as well as the character of many glandular preparations and antitoxins that have come into use in medicine, but have not yet been introduced into the Pharmacopoeia. This work may also possibly serve as a standard under the Adulteration of Food and Drugs Act for the purity and strength of drugs not included in the Pharmacopoeia and as a standard for the commercial grade of purity of those in the Pharmacopoeia which are used for non-medical purposes.

Another legal difficulty connected with modern pharmacopoeias is the inclusion in some of them of synthetic chemical remedies, the processes for preparing which have been patented, whilst the substances are sold under trade mark names such as veronal. The scientific chemical name is often long and unwieldy, and the physician prefers when writing a prescription to use the shorter name under which it is sold by the patentees. In this case the pharmacist is compelled to use the more expensive patented article and the patient complains of the price. If he uses the same article under its pharmacopoeia name when the patented article is prescribed he lays himself open to prosecution by the patentee for infringement of patent rights The only plan, therefore, is for the physician to use the chemical name (which cannot be patented) as given in the Pharmacopoeia, or—for those synthetic remedies not included in the Pharmacopoeia—to use the scientific and chemical name given in the British Pharmaceutical Codex.

International Pharmacopoeia.—Increased facilities for travel have brought into greater prominence the importance of an approach to uniformity in the formulae of the more powerful remedies, in order to avoid danger to patients when a prescription is dispensed in a different country from that in which it was written. Attempts have been made by international pharmaceutical and medical conferences to settle a basis on which an international pharmacopoeia could be prepared, but, owing to national jealousies and the attempt to include too many preparations in such a work it has not as yet