State Board of Health : report of Willis G. Tucker, analyst of drugs.

  • New York (State). Board of Health.
Date:
[1889]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: State Board of Health : report of Willis G. Tucker, analyst of drugs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Methods of Analysis. None but pharmacopoeial articles having been collected, and the standard of quality prescribed by the Pharmacopoeia being the legal standard to which articles included therein must con- form, the pharmacopoeial tests and analytical methods have been generally followed. While exhaustive analyses have not often been necessary, in most cases at least one quantitative determina- tion has been made. Summary of Eesults. Of the 532 samples examined there were classed as of: Good quality .. . Fair quality Inferior quality .. Not as called for . Excessive strength Fictitious Per cent. 233 or 43.8 54 or 10.2 130 or 24.4 33 or 6.2 24 or 4.5 58 or 10.9 As stated in previous reports these percentages “ by no means represent the proportions of good, bad and indifferent drugs on the market and on sale at the stores, since only those articles which were considered likely to be adulterated or known to be frequently of inferior quality, were collected. Had samples of drugs and pharmaceutical preparations been selected at random the proportion of pure and good articles would have been very much larger.” The comparatively large proportion of articles wrongly sold reported above as “ not as called for ” and “ fictitious,” is chiefly due to the sale of common safflower for real saffron and of cream tartar substitutes by grocers for the gemiine article. The following were the articles examined : Diluted Acetic Acid — (.Acidum aceticum dilutum, U. S. P.). Forty samples examined of which there were of good quality, nine ; fair, six; inferior, nineteen, and of excessive strength, six. The Pharmacopoeia requires six per cent of absolute acetic acid. These samples varied from 1.90 to 32.80 per cent and, rejecting the six samples of excessive strength, averaged 4.6 per cent. Some of these samples have been prepared without any regard to