Still further, attention is called to U. S. Patent No. 1,226,394 for a process of making hexamethylenamin tetraiodid and on the product so produced. This patent was issued after the Council had notified the Patent Office that hexamethylenamin tetraiodid had been discovered in 1888 and that a process identical in principle with that for which patent application appeared to have been made was published in 1916. On the basis of claims for which no evidence is produced this patent is issued for a well-known substance on the ground that as previously produced it contained a little free iodin or that the known processes were less economical. This patent appears to be an illustration of our patent procedure which obliged American users of acetylsalicylic acid to pay an exorbitant price because this country granted a patent which gave to the patentee, a foreigner, the exclusive right to the manufacture of the substance, whereas no such patent was issued in the patentee’s own country nor, so far as we can learn, in any other country. It forcibly illustrates the need for a revision either of our patent laws or of their methods of enforcement or both. THE BEVERIDGE PATENT In further justification of the Council’s protest against the provisions of our present law, or the methods of its enforcement, which permit the granting of patents without thorough and scientific investigation of the claims advanced in such letters patent, the Council calls attention to the report, appearing above, of an investigation made by A. J. Carlson, A. E. Kanter and I. Tumpowski, “The Question of the Stability of Secretin,” which relates to U. S. Patent No. 1,181,424, issued to James Wallace Beveridge.