The Belgian Minister to the Secretary of State.
Washington, February 2, 1903.
Mr. Secretary of State: The international conference for the unification of formulas of heroic medicines which was held at Brussels from the 15th to the 20th of September last, resulted in the signing of a final protocol submitting a draft of an arrangement to the approval of the interested governments.
I have the honor to forward to your excellency three copies of the volume which contains the acts of the conference in question.
My Government thought it to be in accordance with the wishes of the interested States to now prepare a draft of an arrangement in the ordinary form of the acts stipulating international agreements and destined to give the diplomatic sanction to the resolutions of the conference [Page 80] of Brussels. Your excellency will find herewith five copies of this document. The list of heroic medicines figuring in article 1 of the draft does not mention as regards the titles: “Aconiti tincture” and “Belladonae extractum,” the committee instructed by the conference to fix the alcaloidique strength of these substances or the system employed to determine this strength. The decisions of this committee can not modify the main body of the prescriptions adopted by the conference nor even that already fixed for the tincture of aconite and the extract of belladonna. This committee, which moreover appears to have been instituted only in order to defer the solution of a question of scientific interest, the study of which is not sufficiently advanced, will not be able to finish its work before a date relatively distant.
Under these conditions, my Government think it may propose the text figuring in the draft herewith as to the preparation of the tincture of aconit and the extract of belladonna.
The King’s Government would be happy to learn, Mr. Secretary of State, that the Government of the United States would be inclined to give its approval to the draft of arrangement in question.
I avail, etc.,