3. _Useful Drugs._--Since the domination of proprietary medicines, which was retarding medical advance and threatening therapeutic chaos, had been made possible only by the insufficient and inefficient instruction given in medical schools in subjects having to do with drugs, the Council appointed a Committee on Medical Teaching to secure the cooperation of teachers in materia medica, pharmacology and related branches. This committee has endeavored to effect an improvement in these courses of instruction. One of the results of this work was the selection of a list of drugs to serve as a basis of materia medica instruction and thus insure that medical students shall be better informed with regard to the therapeutic worth of a few well established drugs, rather than, as in the past, leaving school with a smattering of knowledge about many drugs. The outcome of these efforts is the publication of “Useful Drugs,” a concise but thorough and up-to-date discussion of the actions, uses and dosage of the more important drugs. The list of drugs presented in this book is now the basis of instruction in many schools; and many state examining boards are confining their materia medica questions to the drugs in the list. 4. _Epitome of the U. S. P. and N. F._--To encourage the use of official drugs and to make available an estimate of their therapeutic value, a committee of the Council prepared an abstract of the U. S. Pharmacopeia and the National Formulary. This booklet, the “Epitome of the U. S. Pharmacopeia and National Formulary,” presents those portions of these books which are of interest to physicians, and in addition, gives a concise statement of the therapeutic usefulness of the drugs and preparations described in them. 5. _Patent Law Reform._--Some of the worst abuses connected with the exploitation of proprietary medicines have been made possible by our patent and trademark laws and the method of their interpretation and enforcement. The Council, therefore, appointed a committee to study these laws and the various propositions advanced for their improvement. This committee has published, from time to time, reports on various phases of our patent and trademark laws and recently summarized these reports in an address[5] sent to the commissioner of patents and the interested congressional committees. It is hoped that by means of these reports physicians will be enabled to give intelligent support to a revision of the patent and trademark laws when legislation is proposed. [5] Need for Patent Law Revision, A. M. A. Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry Reports, 1917, p. 130.