Vol.. XKIV. No. 6.] 
POPULAR SCIENCE NEWS. 
95 
as public school educations go, — is old enough to 
enter a school of pharmacy. She will have to put 
her whole attention to it, be interested in it, and 
study failhfullv- In two years she ought to gradu- 
ate. In the meantime she should be in a drugstore 
a few hours each day. She should always be neat, 
cheerful, and attractive, wearing sensible gowns 
and low-heeled, easy boots, but not forgetting pretty 
laces and ribbons. 
Remember the story of the old, rough miner who 
went into a store and was struck speechless by the 
bright eyes and sweet smile of the young lady 
behind the counter. 
'• Well, bless my soul ! " he said, at last, taking olf 
his hat and bowing to the ground; "I aint seen a 
wom'n with sech bright eyes since m' little sister 
dfed. I didn't want a thing w'en I cum in liyer, but 
Tfii a go'n t' buy somethin' now, yuh bet!" 
The following day that young lady's salary was 
raised, simply because she had given as kindly a 
smile to an old, shabby man as she would have 
given to a millionaire. This, by the way, is a true 
incident. 
The young girl who enters a drug store must be 
willing to do anything and everything that would 
be required of a boy, and, what is still more iinpor- 
tant, to do it cheerfully — never grudgingly. She 
should even be willing to wash bottles and clean 
lamps, sweep, dust, and polish show-cases. She 
must have no false pride. Such work is no harder, 
and certainly no more degrading, when done in a 
store than when performed at home. If you are 
ashamed to work you will never amount to anything 
— so there is no use trying to help you. II you are 
ashamed to work, by all means marry some old man 
for his money and dawdle your life away as a society 
(pieen ; shop, call, dance, receive, lounge about in 
tea gowns, and have ^our pictirre in all the illus- 
trated newspapers, as the "young and beautiful 
Mrs. So-and-So," — and be sure that you wear a low- 
gown and no sleeves. This is what women were 
created for — a long time ago. 
But, girls, if you want to work, you will find 
nothing so pleasant, so interesting, and, withal, so 
fascinating as the drug business. Your studies will 
be difBcult, your discipline severe, your apprentice- 
ship hard, and your trials and disappointments 
many ; but you will be rewarded. By the time you 
are twenty-two or twenty-three you will be a 
successful business woman, and you will be inde- 
pendent of everyone and proud of yourself. Do not 
ever be content to be a second-rate drug clerk 
though, for he comes next to the dude in insignifi- 
cance. Be first-class, be thorough, be self-reliant, 
be conscientious, be affable, be cheerful, and, above 
and beyond all, — in the drug business, — be sure. 
There is, I know, a mighty prejudice against 
" wimmen folks 'n a 'pothecary shop;" but Ih.t, 
must be lived down. Be the first, or among the 
first, to live it down. To be a thorough pharmacist 
and a successful business wom^a means that you 
must be proud of yourself; means that you will be 
sought by employers, instead of seeking employ- 
ment; means that you will be busy and happy and 
independent. Besides, it is a business that is not 
overrun, and a business that will not be supplanted 
by some new invention for doing the same work. 
We will always require doctors and doctors' pre- 
scriptions, and we will take them to the most com- 
petent prescriptionists to have them compounded. 
I know a woman who went to a young Oregon 
town, — a new railroad town, — where drinking, 
swearing, fights, and murders were of almost 
nightly occurrence. She took a position in a drug 
store, and she found her pathway full of thorns. 
Everyone looked at her suspiciously. They were 
afraid of her; afraid she didn't understand what she 
was about; afraid she would give them strychnine 
instead of Epsom salt, or laudanum instead of pare- 
goric; afraid of anything and everything under the 
sun, — simply because she was a woman. But she 
did not grow discouraged. She never gave the 
thought of failure a.n instant's lodgment in her 
brain. She worked cheerfully and faithfully. If a 
man rudely and surlily declined to let her '• fill his 
prescription," she sweetly gave him a handful of 
pretty cards " for his children" — although the little 
hypocrite knew that he had none. When an old 
farmer had kept her standing half an hour while he 
looked over books, and finally asked for an "allmy- 
nic," she gave it to him as cheerfully and as prettily 
as if it had been twenty dollars' worth of drugs. 
She never became nervous or flustrated ; as railroad 
men s.-jy, she never got "rattled." She was always 
sure she was right, which gave her an air of self- 
possession which invited confidence. She was a 
good salesw Oman. She learned to buy and to sell ; 
and she gradually worked her way to 'success. 
Today people enter that store and inquire for her, 
instead of asking rudely, as they once did, if there 
"ain't a wa» 'bout th' shop." Every railroad man, 
every gambler, every woman (good or bad), and 
every old farmer from twenty n,iles out in the 
country knows hers and respects her. 
"Why," said a society lady who was out riding 
with her one day, "did that roughly-dressed man 
lift his hat to you /" 
"lie did," she replied, amusedly; "and what is 
more, I gave him my sweetest smile, and was more 
sincerely glad to have him do me honor than I 
would be to have one of your 'dudes' go down on 
his knees to me." 
But, first of all, girls, make up your minds that 
you want to work, and to work well. Never do 
anything by halves. Do not think you can rush 
through a course of pharmacy and enter a drug 
stare and carry everything before you. Impress 
upon your mind that those long rows of glittering 
bottles hold life and death, and that each cut stopper 
must be removed with care and with steady fingers 
and clear eyes. Only think how many, many dif- 
ferent things there are, and each has from one to 
six different names, — and you must know them all. 
Think, too, that you must know how each looks, 
smells, tastes; its properties, its dose, its antidote; 
if it be a poison. You must know a very great 
deal, and you must be able to look as if you knew 
still more. I realize what I am taking upon myself 
in making that last assertion, and I do not hesitate 
to repeat it. In a drug store, you may be wise as a 
seer, but if you are so unfortunate as to look nervous 
or uncertain, it is all up with you. There is another 
thing, too. Do not expect to be "favored,"' or to 
Inve things made easy for you because you are a 
woman. Be womanly, always, but if you take a 
man's place, do his work also. If your employer 
tries to make your work lighter, accept and appre- 
ciate his kindness ; but do not expect it. 
Girls, do you want to try it.' If you do, and if 
you try honestly and patiently, you will succeed, 
and you will be delighted with your work. Anyone 
can learn to sell yards on yards of ribbons and laces 
over a counter — can even make a good and efficient 
clerk — without being educated or refined ; but, to 
make a successful pharmacist, he must be both. 
I have known drug clerks who were competent, 
honest, industrious, and of good habits, who were 
not worth $50 a month to any employer. Why? 
Simply because they were machines. They knew 
that Sulph. Magnesia is Epsom Salt, it is true; but 
they spelled teaspoonful with a double 1, "several," 
" severeal ; " "daily," "daly;" they had a dreamy, 
vacant look in their eyes, as if they might be com- 
posing spi'ing poems by the yard ; in arranging a 
show-case, they placed all the dressing-cases, all the 
toilet-cases, all the reds, blues, and yellows together, 
instead of arranging them so the colors would blend 
and soften each other, and gave as their e.\cuse that 
" it made things sort o' handy I " But druggists are 
always on the lookout for good clerks, and they pay 
them well. Therefore, my dear girl, be a good one ; 
be a thorough one; be a sure, a firm, a competent 
one ; be one that everybody will want. You can do 
it. You are as bright and as self-reliant as your 
brother; and if you will just make up your mind to 
take the bitter along with the sweet, it will all come 
right. And Miss So-and-So, Ph. G., will answer in 
a firm, strong, business hand many of those little 
advertisements of "Wanted — a competent drug 
clerk," — and she will get the situation, too. 
OPEN-AIR EXERCISE IN CONSUMPTION. 
Dr. II. I. BowDiTCii, of Boston, one of the most 
eminent sanitarians in this country, in an interest- 
ing paper read before the American Climatological 
Association, gives some interesting personal obser- 
vations relative to the benefits te consumptive 
patients from exercise in the open air. He says 
that his father, at thirty-five years of age, had all 
the signs of consumption — cough, hemorrhage from 
the lungs, diarrhcua, fever, emaciation, and great 
debility. In this condition he set out on a tour 
through New England, travelling in a chaise with a 
friend for a companion, and a driver. At the end 
of the first day's travel he was so much exhausted 
by hemorrhage that his friend was advised to take 
him home to die. He, however, persisted in his 
effort, and every day brought him added strength. 
He travelled on this tour 748 miles, and returned 
home greatly improved in every respect. He lived 
thirty years after this, dying at the age of sixty-five 
years of cancer of the stomach. It was his custom 
during these thirty years to walk two or three times 
daily from one,ind a half to two miles. 
Further, Dr. Bowditch says his father married his 
cousin, who died, after many years of infirmity, of 
consumption. There were eight children as the 
result of this union, six of whom reached adult life. . 
According to all laws of heredity it would be ex- 
pected that at least there would be a marked predis- 
position to lung disease. The facts show, however, 
that of ninety-three children and grandchildren not 
one showed the least trace of consumption. The 
doctor believes this condition was the result of his 
father having required all his children to take all 
exercise out doors possible, knowing the great bene- 
fit that had come to him from such a course. 
tie says : " If any of us, while attending school, 
were observed to be drooping, or made the least 
pretense even of being not exactly well, he took us 
from school, and very often sent us to the country to 
have farm life and out-of-door play to our hearts' 
content. In consequence of this early instruction, 
all of his descendants have become thoroughly im- 
pressed with the advantages of daily walking, of 
summer vacations in the country, and of camping 
out, etc., among the mountains. These habits have 
been transmitted, I think, to his grandchildren, in a 
stronger form, if possible, than he himself had them." 
In conclusion he said : "I submit these facts and 
thoughts tor candid, mature, and practical consider- 
ation and use in the treatment all are called to make 
of this terrible scourge in all parts of this Union. 
For my own part, I fully believe that many patients 
now die from want of .this open-air treatment. 
For years I have directed every consumptive patient 
to walk daily from three to six miles ; never to stay 
all day at home unless a violent storm is raging. 
When they are in doubt about going out, owing to 
bad weather, I direct them to solve the doubt, not 
by staying in the house, but by going out." 
