Whisky Left Out by W. H. S.

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 17, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 32.

Whisky Left Out

By W. H. S.

THE new edition of the United States Pharmacopoeia, which is the authoritative list of medicinal substances for this country, leaves out whisky and brandy.

This is how it came about, according to the New Republic: It seems that the government, called upon during the last ten years to answer specifically the question, “What is whisky?” has rendered a definition differing considerably from that of the Pharmacopoeia, which specified straight spirits of fermented grain aged two years at least. When the revisers got down to spiritus frumenti, as the doctors call the stuff, there was a contention whether to adopt the new government definition or stick to the more exigent standard of the earlier edition.

While the discussion was going on, it dawned on them that they were wasting their time, because scarcely a doctor ever prescribes this “medicine.” To repeat a quotation from one of their number, “We don’t use whisky as a medicine anyhow, and there is no more use of fixing a standard for whisky than there is of fixing a standard of garbage.” So now the doctors do not officially know what whisky and brandy are.

W. H. S.