The American Medical Association and the United States pharmacopoeia / a reprint of the pamphlets of H.C. Wood, Alfred B. Taylor, the Philadelphia County Medical Society, and the National College of Pharmacy ; with a rejoinder addressed to the professions of medicine and pharmacy of the United States, by Edward R. Squibb.

E. R. Squibb

Date:: 1877

Credit: The American Medical Association and the United States pharmacopoeia / a reprint of the pamphlets of H.C. Wood, Alfred B. Taylor, the Philadelphia County Medical Society, and the National College of Pharmacy ; with a rejoinder addressed to the professions of medicine and pharmacy of the United States, by Edward R. Squibb. 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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poeia has for the first time hecn left without a commentary is con- tradicted, in an oftensive way, on the ground that there is a com- mentary about to be published. Toward the close of the pamphlet this remarkable paragraph upon the proposed plan appears: The project being fairly entered upon, failure means ruin to The Association; success and failure alike mean uprooting and tumult, disturbance of accepted values aud customs, years of anarchy and doubt throughout the breadth and length of the land, and at the end probably two standards and the multitudinous curses of such a condition. This climax seems to complete the picture offered to The Associa- tion. To use the strong language and the omniscient positiveness of the pamphlet, The Association has to choose between the success- ors of a generation of intellectual giants, a Convention of experts, and a Pharmacopoeia that is certainly very good, on the one hand, and on the other dishonorable means, bankrujitcy in purse and reputation, strife, anarchy and ruin, and the multitudinous curses of such a condition. On the last page the National Convention is pointed at as a congress of specialists selected from the whole profession on account of their sjiecial training and fitness. And this is said and urged just as though the Conventions themselves made the selec- tion, or as though the managers and engineers of the Conventions, rather than the profession at large, made them up and owned them ; and just as though the whole profession was incorporated and therefore sent delegates to these Con vontions, when, perhaps, bj' far the largest portion of the whole profession is not incorporated, and tlierefi)re cannot be represented in these Conventions as they are in The American Medical Association. The last half jiage of the pamphlet is so directly personal to this writer that he cannot reply to it farther than to say that he neither wants nor seeks for anything that The Association has to ofter,— not even a moderate degree of confidence in the integrity of his motives in presenting this plan, if that should have to be asked for. Hence the pamphlet must be left in peaceable possession of all that it has made out of the anjumentum ad homhiem. The next criticisras upon the published plan that were seen were in two editorials in the successive numbers of the Philadel])hia Medical Times, for March 3d and 17th, 18V7. These, however, seem to consist of a rej>etition of the points made in the pamphlet, witli if possible a still greater degree of positiveness as to what a

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