By the federal Food and Drugs Act and by state acts, two books are made the official or legal standards for drugs and their preparations, namely, the Pharmacopeia and the National Formulary. The Pharmacopeia does not standardize all drugs and preparations. On the contrary, it is highly selective; and while at each decennial revision it has admitted some new and approved remedies and their preparations, it has also sought to eliminate from its pages those remedies that have failed to combine both worth and extensive employment. In the last revision it gained much by eliminating many of those preparations, formerly so much in vogue, that had a shotgun make-up or were combinations which forbade simplicity in prescribing.
The National Formulary, revised and issued by the American Pharmaceutical Association, is in a sense supplementary to the Pharmacopeia, for its drugs and preparations are those which have been discarded from the Pharmacopeia