THE CHEMICAL LABORATORY OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
The Chemical Laboratory of the American Medical Association was established in 1906 to assist the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry in the investigation of proprietary remedies.
In accordance with the principle of its foundation, the Laboratory examines and checks the claims made for the composition and chemical properties of the products under examination by the Council, and when these are admitted to New and Nonofficial Remedies, it insures the establishment of tests and standards whereby the identity and purity of these products may be controlled. In addition, the Laboratory supplies information, secured by reference to chemical and pharmaceutical literature or by actual analytic work, in regard to proprietary and unofficial medicines, either for publication in The Journal of the American Medical Association or through direct correspondence.
Those portions of the Laboratory’s activities which are of special interest to physicians and which were not included in the Reports of the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry were included in the Propaganda for Reform in Proprietary Medicines, ninth edition (1916), so far as they had been published up to the time when the edition was issued; those made during the last five years are included in Part II of this volume.
For a detailed report of the Laboratory’s work, the reader is referred to the article that follows on “The Work of the American Medical Association Chemical Laboratory.” Those who are interested in the analysis of drugs are referred to the Reports of the Chemical Laboratory issued annually for the details of the analyses which have been made by the Laboratory.
THE WORK OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION CHEMICAL LABORATORY[G]
W. A. Puckner, Phar.D.
The American Medical Association Chemical Laboratory was established nearly ten years ago—in fall of 1906. The reason for its existence was primarily the fact that the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry found it difficult to secure from outside sources such help as it needed in checking up the composition and properties of proprietary medicines under investigation. Medical schools and similar institutions were found ready to lend their assistance in pharmacologic and medical investigations; but the chemical investigation required the establishment of a laboratory under the control of the American Medical Association.