The urgent necessity for the eslab-Ushment in every large centre China of laboratories for the standard-Haation of drugs, in order to find their actual potency. was emphasized by Dr. C, Pak, lecturing on the physiological standardization of drugs, at the Henry Lester Institute of Medical Reseureh, Avenue Road, on Dec. 9. Dr. Pak called attention to instances of serious frauds reported recently. in, various parts of the world, necessitate Ing a proper system of verification of the quality of drugs.
The ficiency of a new remedy, explained Dr. Pak, was judged by comparison with the action of a known drug, by means of bloloj assay, and on the whole the great sensitiveness of biological assay was fan advantage over chemical assay. Crude drugs showed extremely large variations in their content of active rinelples. The colour, size, and other physical properties " might appear Identical, "but some samples wore from five to fifty times more active than others.
Dr. Pak mentioned the inter= national conference held for the Airst time by the League of Nations Health Committee at Edinburgh in 1923, when a Permanent Commission on Biological Standardization was established, Uniform physiological Standardization could only be eslab-Uished by international ce-operation, the prinefple alm of which was the creation of permanent standard pre-Parations, and the main object of international agreement was the ceptance of such standards, and the definition of units in terms of them. Standard preparations were not absolutely necessary and desirable when once the active' principles of drugs had been Isolated and prepared In chemically pure form.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.