DRUGS. Since the act of 1882, relative to food and drug inspection, requires that three-fifths of the appropriation for its enforcement shall be expended upon the inspection of milk and milk products, it is plain that the work of drug inspection must be of a limited character. Notwithstanding this fact, the number of samples examined in 1891 was 424, of which number 352, or 83 per cent., were found to conform to the requirements of the statutes. These included specimens of 43 different pharmacopoeial preparations which were selected for examination mainly on account of special liability to adulteration. Hence the ratio of adulteration found upon examination (17 per cent.), small as it is, is undoubtedly considerably in excess of the actual ratio of general drug adulteration in the State. Among the number of samples of drugs are included 34 samples of empirical preparations, the greater number of which were cosmetics of a more or less poisonous and decidedly harmful character. Some of these were described in the last annual report, and others have been made the subject of complaint at court during the past year. It occasionally happens that pharmacopoeial preparations vary considerably from the required standard in the case of articles where such variation would be least expected. For example, an article so simple and easily obtained as distilled water presented the following ranges of variation in the amount of solid matter contained in 7 samples obtained in different cities in the State: An examination of the foregoing list shows a range in the amount of total solids in the samples offered as distilled water varying from 0 to 32 parts in 100,000. It also shows the possibility of procuring an absolutely pure distilled water. There is no excuse, however, for furnishing to a customer a sample of water of a quality nearly as bad as the average sewage of a city, as in the sample No. 7 of the foregoing list. A considerable change has constantly been going on in the character of the drugs employed for the treatment of disease, especially during the past ten or twenty years, and very many synthetic drugs, the products of the chemist's laboratory, have supplanted to a considerable degree the materia medica of older times. Some of these which have proved to be of undoubted value have been admitted to the U. S. Pharmacopoeia after the test of experience had been applied to them. The number of such preparations which has come into existence within the past decade has been unusually large, much greater than those which had appeared previous to the publication of the Pharmacopoeia of 1880. The Board has not confined its inspection of drugs to those which are officinal only, since the law of 1882 applies not only to the drugs of the U. S. Pharmacopoeia but also to those of other pharmacopoeias and standard works on materia medica, and, in fact, to all medicines sold for external or internal use, and to disinfectants, antiseptics and cosmetics. Hence occasional examinations have been made of empirical preparations, and especially of such as are of an injurious or fraudulent character. As examples, may be mentioned an examination of hair dyes and of so-called opium cures in 1885, of tonics and bitters in 1887. PROSECUTIONS. The prosecutions which were conducted during the year will be found detailed in the following summary, a copy of which was submitted to the Legislature early in the present year, in compliance with the provisions of the food and drug acts. The following comment upon this summary should be noted. The number of prosecutions for violation of the laws relative to the sale of oleomargarine was very much smaller than that of the previous year, a fact which was not due to lessened vigilance on the part of the inspectors, but to the effect of an unusually rigid enforcement of the laws in 1890, so that cases of violation of the statutes had become of rare occurrence. new act was passed in 1891, giving added power to local milk A inspectors relative to the sale of oleomargarine; and still another act in the same year, establishing a dairy bureau, to which power was given for the same purpose; so that butter in Massachusetts has now the protection afforded by four different sets of officials, namely, the internal revenue officers, the State Board of Health, the local milk inspectors, and the Dairy Bureau. OFFICE OF THE STATE BOARD OF HEALTH, 13 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, March, 1892. To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in General Court assembled. The following summary is made in compliance with the provisions of chapter 289, section 2, of the Acts of 1884, requiring the State Board of Health to "report annually to the Legislature the number of prosecutions made under chapter 263 of the Acts of 1882, and an itemized account of all money expended in carrying out the provisions thereof." The whole number of prosecutions made by authority of the Board against offenders, under the provisions of the food and drug acts, for the year ending Sept. 30, 1891, was 150. The cities and towns in which the articles were sold, and in respect to which complaints were entered in court, the character of the articles found to be adulterated, or fraudulently sold, the dates of the trials and their result, are presented in the following table : |