About Your Medicines, Abstracted From the 1981 United States Pharmacopeia Dispensing Information,
Abridged Consumer ed, 594 pp; Complete Reference ed, 398 pp, paper, $4.50, $8.95, Rockville, Md, US Pharmacopeial Convention, 1981.After 160 years of setting standards of purity and potency for medications used in the United States, the US Pharmacopeia no longer rolls along in the old ruts. It has branched in a new direction—providing drug information for physicians, other health workers, and patients. The parent volume of this wellspring is the USP Dispensing Information (USP DI). A divided book, the first section has prescribing and dispensing information for professionals, and the second part has advice for patients. Monographs for prescribers on many drugs or drug classes can be found in the first section, and corresponding monographs for patients are located in the second section. This latter section on patient information is a unique and noteworthy feature of the