PHARMACOPOEIA, a book containing directions for the identification of simples and the preparation of compound medi cines, and published by the authority of a government or of a medical or pharmaceutical society. The first work of the kind published under government authority appears to have been that of Nuremberg in 1542.
In England until 1617 such drugs and medicines as were in com mon use were sold by the apothecaries and grocers. In that year the apothecaries obtained a separate charter, and it was enacted that no grocer should keep an apothecary's shop. The preparation of physicians' prescriptions was thus confined to the apothecaries, upon whom pressure was brought to bear to make them dispense accurately, by the issue of a pharmacopoeia in 1618 by the Col lege of Physicians of London, and by the power which the wardens of the apothecaries received in common with the censors of the College of Physicians of examining the shops of apothecaries within 7 m. of London and destroying all the compounds which they found unfaithfully prepared. Between 1618 and 1851, 13 editions of the London Pharmacopoeia were issued, each tending towards simplification and elimination of many ridiculous and highly compound medicines that had been in vogue for 2,000 years.
The first Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia was published in 1699 and the last in 1841; the first Dublin Pharmacopoeia in 1807 and the last in 185o.
The preparations contained in these three pharmacopoeias were not all uniform in strength. In consequence of this inconvenience and danger the Medical Act of 1858 ordained that the General Medical Council should cause to be published the British Phar macopoeia, which should be a substitute throughout Great Britain and Ireland for the separate pharmacopoeias. The first British Pharmacopoeia was published in 1864. Since then revised editions have been brought out periodically, physicians and pharmacists being consulted in their compilation. But each new edition re quires several years to carry out numerous experiments for devis ing suitable formulae, so that the current Pharmacopoeia can never be quite up to date. This difficulty has hitherto been met by the
publication of such non-official formularies as Squire's Companion to the Pharmacopoeia and Martindale's Extra Pharmacopoeia, re cording all new remedies and their preparations, uses and doses.
National pharmacopoeias now exist in the following countries : Austria, Belgium, Chile, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Brit ain, Greece, Holland, Hungary, India, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Italy, Switzerland, the United States, Venezuela, Rumania, Finland, Argentina and Servia.
The French Codex has probably a more extended use than any other pharmacopoeia outside its own country, being, in connec tion with Dorvault's L'Officine, the standard for druggists in a large portion of Central and South America; it is also official in Turkey. It contains about 1,25o drugs and preparations, or double the average of other modern pharmacopoeias.
Some difficulty has arisen since the passing of the Adulteration of Food and Drugs Act concerning the use of the Pharmacopoeia as a legal standard for the drugs and preparations contained in it. It has been held in the Divisional Courts (Dickins v. Randerson) that the Pharmacopoeia is a standard for official preparations asked for under their pharmacopoeial name. But for many drugs and chemicals not in the Pharmacopoeia there is no standard of purity that can be used under the Adulteration of Food and Drugs Act. An important step towards supplying this need has been taken by the publication under the authority of the Council of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain of the British Pharma ceutical Code; in which the characters of and tests for the purity of many non-official drugs and preparations are given as well as the character of many glandular preparations and antitoxins that have come into use in medicine, but have not yet been introduced into the Pharmacopoeia.