Few, if any, public health measures are of more direct importance than efficient regulation of the purity and identity of widely recognized medicaments and reasonable regulation of their use or, at least, restriction of their abuse. To secure a fuller appreciation of the uses and limitations of drugs is to benefit the public at large as well as to advance the development of the science of medicine.
It is gratifying, therefore, that the United States Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service has recognized the importance of drugs and drug standards in public health work and is now cooperating in a practical way with the Committee on Revision of the Pharmacopeia to improve our standards for drugs and to promulgate a knowledge of the true values or shortcomings of official medicaments. Our readers will, no doubt, be interested in the series of bulletins constituting a "Digest of Comments on the Pharmacopeia of