So again with regard to barks, especially the cinchonas—one refusing to admit any except the true medicinal article; another admitting Maricaibo and other false barks usually sold in market as pale bark, or used to adulterate that article.—But, upon the whole class of crude drugs, the effect has been highly beneficial. Greater care is taken in their selection and preparation for market, and a vast quantity of many kinds of barks and roots heretofore finding daily their way into market either in their simple worthlessness or mixed with purer and different articles, are now scarcely, if ever found; and if seen, they are about the last of their kind.—Now and then, an article may get through our ports, by some adroit means of deception, or be slipped in at a port where there is no examiner, but this must be but seldom.—But recently, in New York, I saw several casks of gum guaic, the heads of which, for about six inches, were filled with a fair article, while the remaining portion of the cask was made up of the vilest trash imaginable. This is but a shallow trick that could not be often repeated, for though it might decieve the examiner (as it did not), it would meet detection in {268} the hands of the jobber, who would not fail to claim damages from the importer at once. Another mode of evading the law, is by sending sample packages to the examining office, or such cases as are known to be all right, and getting the whole invoice passed by them. This can only be guarded against by the examiner being always upon the alert, and where there is the least doubt, refusing to pass anything except what he sees and knows to be correct as to quality. The facility with which this fraud may be practised, led the convention of the Colleges of Pharmacy to recommend that every package should be examined; an opinion, I then and now fully concur in. Many similar instances, both in regard to chemicals, chemical preparations and all sorts of crude drugs, might be given, but they have no bearing upon the object of this report, only as they point to a necessity for the law’s continuance.
Another immediate result of the law is the exclusion of damaged drugs. Heretofore no state of damage or decay, whether little or much, prevented an article, either manufactured or crude, being thrown into market and sold for whatever it purported to be, whether calomel half oxydyzed, iodide of potassium one-third deliquesced, rhubarb one-half rotten, senna in a similar or worse condition from being soaked with salt water—they each sold under their original names, and found their way into the bands of the buyers of cheap goods, either in that state or powdered or re-bottled, re-labelled, and done up good as new. The importer got his drawback of twenty-five, fifty, and seventy per cent. of duty. The insurance company sold the goods and paid the difference; bargain getters purchased; the physician prescribed; the apothecary dealt out, and the patient, suffering under the pains and ills of lingering disease, swallowed; all but the last got their pay, while the poor man who bore the unrighteous accumulation of the whole, cursed his physician for not understanding his complaint, and perchance turned his face to the wall and died. This is no fancy sketch, but true, every word of it, and more than once acted out in the dream of every-day life. {269}
Under the proper construction and administration of the law, all this will and is now mostly prevented. It must be evident that any article of medicine essentially damaged, is not fit to be given to the sick as a remedy. This is a very important point, and all examiners should be careful to enforce it strictly, regardless of the specious plea of interested insurance companies or individuals, for any other construction for their general or especial benefit or relief.
In few words then, may be summed up the immediate effects of this law: A purer and better class of chemicals and compound preparations, a material improvement in the quality of crude drugs imported, such as gums, barks, roots, leaves, and an almost entire exclusion of damaged and decayed drugs from our markets.
These results are, in themselves, sufficient to mark the law as one of great value, and to entitle it to a sure claim for perpetuity, and its provisions to a steady enforcement. But they are by no means all that it has accomplished. Its remote or secondary effects, which I propose to point out, are equally important, and they are found in the influence upon our home manufactures and trade.
It has often been claimed that the law was a tariff for protection to home adulteration, and while we shut out the evil in one way, we were equally exposed to it in the shape of home preparations; were this even true, it is no argument against the law for keeping out foreign adulteration, as it is very evident that if both are equally bad, no pure medicine can be had by those who require them, while if we are certain the foreign are pure, we have a choice between the pure and the sophisticated. But I am satisfied that the amount of home adulterations have been over estimated, and that under the effect of this law they are decreasing daily, and perhaps mainly because the demand is decreasing.
I have never believed, though it has been again and again asserted, that our medical gentleman to any great extent, who buy and use most largely of this class of goods, have desired {270} to buy and use inferior medicines, because they were cheap, and my own direct intercourse and observation, as a druggist for five years, aside from a six years’ experience in the profession, has satisfied me of the correctness of my views. I speak of the country at large. Wherever it has been the case, it has been the result of ignorance, as to the appearance and physical properties of drugs that has led them into this error, an error in which, from a like ignorance, they have been kept by their druggist, who has been imposed upon by the bland assurance of the importer or jobber, which led him to take all things of a like name as of the same quality. There are those who buy because cheap, and prescribe, and perchance hope for success in the use of such remedies, but they are not found among our medical gentlemen of education and character and entitled to the respect and confidence of the community at large. The flood of light thrown upon this subject of adulterations of medicines by the reports to Congress; by the report of Dr. Bailey, special examiner for the port of New York; reports to the American Medical Association, and by various other writers in our pharmaceutical and medical journals, through the newspapers of the day, and various other means to the people, has worked, and is working a revolution in the drug trade at large. By a desire and growing necessity for a proper education of pharmaceutists and druggists, a man is no longer considered competent to sell, dispose and deal out medicinal articles affecting the health, life and happiness of his fellow-beings, simply because he can calculate a per centage, or make a profit.
The reform in this department is, I know, but just beginning, though long needed, but it will progress, for public opinion demands, and will continue to demand it.
Physicians, professors of materia medica, and teachers of practical pharmacy and chemistry are feeling it, and the whole course of teaching upon this and kindred branches, has received more attention from both professor and pupil within the two past years, than ever before in the same length of time in the United States. From these combined sources will continue to {271} flow a light that must shine upon and enlighten that ignorance which was permitting men to tamper with the life and health of the community. This has also had the effect to create a demand for pure medicines. Rhubarb is no longer rhubarb unless the quality is such as to commend it to the unfortunate consumer, and calling a thing by a good name is no longer sufficient to redeem it from its lack of curative properties and consequent worthlessness.
Again, the endeavor to come up to the law’s standard for chemicals, the competition with the imported article, the increasing demand for good medicines, together with a commendable emulation among our chemists, has produced an improvement in this class of goods, sufficiently visible to refute all charges of home adulteration because protected from foreign competition; besides this, they are our fellow citizens, within reach of our complaints, with no intermediate dealer to shift the blame of impurity to the other side of the ocean, and thus wash his innocent hands at our cost. With this and the spirit of inquiry as to what we are selling, what we are buying, what we are administering, what we are swallowing with hopes of relief, that is abroad, no man can long escape detection, exposure and consequent loss of business, if engaged in the manufacture or sale of spurious goods.