Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Abstract of the Proceedings of the National Convention of 1900 for Revising the United States Pharmacopoeia: Held at Washington, May 2, 3, and 4, 1900
It is true that, as told in the historical introduction to the Pharmacopcxia, there was published in Philadelphia, in 1778, for military purposes a small Pharmacopoeia, but it was the Counsellors of the Massachusetts Medical Society who, in 1805, first appreciated the need in America of a general Pharmacopoeia, and it was the rmlt of their labors, issued in 1808, that suggested to Dr. Lyman Spalding, of New York City, the formation of the National Standard.
The dry-bones of history, such as may be found in the Opening pages of the United States Pharmacopmia, interest most of us but little, but when they are clothed with ?esh and blood, it quickens heart-beats to see how near akin the men of the past were to the men of the present, and how, notwithstanding all change, the continuing brotherhood of the rage reveals itself in the written lines.
In 1874, profoundly irnpressed with the rapid multiplica tion of medical books, and the phenomenal growth of medi cal literature, I wrote, in opening the preface to my book on therapeutics: Indeed, art is so long, life is so short, that every student has the right to demand of an author by what authority he doeth these things, and to challenge every me moir for its raison d'etre. Judge of my surprise, when te cently looking over the Pharmacopoeia published by the Mas sachusetts Medical Society, to read among the first sentences. Books multiply so fast that it has become necessary to pre face every new work with reasons, indeed almost an apology, for its appearance. This in 1808, when America was little else than a wilderness; when, as we view' the matter, neither medical journalism nor medical literature existed in the United States.
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