6 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
[July 1,1871. 
THE .ESTHETICS OF LABELS. 
BY JAMES 11. MERCEIN. 
“A good workman is known by his chips,” says the 
old adage; a careful pharmacist is known, or should be, 
by his labels, say I. Sent out as they are upon multi¬ 
form parcels to the homes of our customers, they pass 
beyond our reach and speak for themselves—and for us. 
It behoves us, then, to be very circumspect as to the out¬ 
ward adorning of our dumb representatives. A roughly 
cut, badly printed label, such as we too often see, is like 
a “ shocking bad hat,” on a well-dressed man, spoiling 
the tout ensemble and betraying the sloven. Pharmacists 
err in thinking their patrons inobservant of such seem¬ 
ingly small matters. The almost Egyptian mystery that 
surrounds the ordinary details of our profession baffles 
the looker-on, and he naturally judges us by our out¬ 
ward symbols and tokens, of which the label is the most 
familiar. Ex pede llercule ,—if by the brazen foot the 
ancients estimated the statue, let us see to it, that the 
labels, our representatives, shall be a worthy exemplar 
of our work. The form of the label is the first point to 
be looked at. A round peg in a square hole does not 
look more out of place than an ill-shaped or over-sized 
label, and yet every day you will see a huge bit of paper 
on a “wee little” bottle, or a diminutive scrap on a 
portly flagon, thereby neutralizing the good looks of 
both labels and vials. Of course there can be no definite 
rule as to proper sizes, but the pharmacist should train 
his eye and his taste intuitively to recognize the right 
proportions. Let him avoid exactly square labels, or 
those abortive attempts which resemble monumental 
tablets. Double lines in the border, and rounded tops 
•will give a label, printed in black ink especially, a 
tomb-stone look that must be suggestive to the patient. 
Hogarth insisted that the curve was the line of beauty, 
but if he had seen the shield-shaped labels now in such 
common use for “Elixirs” and “Syrups,” he would 
have retracted his assertion instanter. Tastes will differ, 
of course, but to my eye these pharmaceutic escutcheons 
are fearfully and wonderfully ugly. In fact, almost 
every irregular form of label, unless its matter is nicely 
distributed and its type selected with the greatest care, 
is apt to be very ungraceful. For steady use, the old- 
fashioned oblong label, in width not quite half its length, 
wears best and looks best. For packages, the strip label, 
long and narrow is preferable. Well printed and tied 
on, so that its upper edge lies on the edge of the fold, it 
sets off a handsome bundle. 
An octagon looks well on pill-boxes, and is a relief 
from the almost inevitable circle. 
But it is in the printed matter, its distribution and its 
types where improvement is sadly needed. Why phar¬ 
macists in the progressive age should persist in using 
the stereotyped phrases in vogue thirty years ago, the 
same old-fashioned type, the venerable mortar, alembic, 
and retort; why we should do these things because our 
fathers did so before us, is a mystery. The art of type- 
cutting presents us with so many varied forms of letters, 
that numberless combinations, novel yet elegant, can 
readily be made. The chief error with pharmacists is a 
tendency to over-crowd their labels with reading matter; 
one would think they were trying to advertise all then- 
wares in this small space, and yet the truth is, beyond 
the publicity of name and address, the label is not an 
advertisement, but merely a voucher for the contents of 
the package. A few lines, terse and to the point, are 
far better than a crowded jumble of disjointed sen¬ 
tences. “A rivulet of text flowing through a meadow 
of margin” should be the rule, as every printer will tell 
you. Useless verbiage and common-place phrases should 
be avoided. “Fine drugs and chemicals constantly on 
hand,” “physicians’prescriptions carefully compounded,” 
etc. etc., should be treated with the respect due to old 
age—and laid aside. If we are good pharmacists, these 
antique puffs will be unnecessary; if we are poor ones, 
such stale bait will not lure customers. 
The titles that pharmacists assume are, as a general 
thing, decidedly inappropriate, and needing amendment. 
There is no doubt that the words “Pharmaceutist,” or 
“ pharmacist,” are more nearly correct as expressing our 
professional status, although some contend that these 
should be peculiar to graduates. Be this as it may, the 
nomenclature of to-day is wrong. “Druggist” means 
no more or less than a seller of drugs, crude or other¬ 
wise, and implies no skill. It puts us on a level with 
any tradesman who simply sells to gain; the word should 
be confined to wholesale dealers only. Even when yoked 
with “chemist,” as it often is, it will not pass muster. 
How many of us can lay the slightest claim to being 
chemists, further than the ordinary requirements of 
every-day business will warrant the title; and yet we 
coolly force ourselves into the ra nk s of a profession that 
requires the life-long attention of a Liebig, a Berzelius, 
a Doremus, or a Bridges! “Dispensing chemist” is 
equally absurd, or even more so. Who for a moment, 
aided by the most vivid imagination, could picture the 
above-mentioned analysts dispensing senna and manna, 
or mixing a dose of oil! The term “apothecary” is so 
exclusively English, and refers to such a different mode 
of doing business, half medical and half pharmaceutical, 
that it is totally inapplicable here. “Pharmacist” ex¬ 
presses exactly what we are; is not so clumsy as “ phar¬ 
maceutist,” looks well on a label, and better than all, 
does not make us appear, like the jackdaw of the fable, 
in borrowed plumes. In closing this homily, it seems 
almost superfluous to hint at such inelegancies as past¬ 
ing one label over another, or over the seam of a bottle; 
of putting it on crooked, or with ragged edges; but I 
feel that most of my pill-rolling brethren will bear me 
out in the assertion that these slips are too often made. 
“What is worth doing at all, is worth doing well,” says 
another old adage .—American Journal of Eharmacy. 
FLUID EXTRACTS AND THEIR MENSTRUA.* 
BY EDWARD R. SQUIBB, M.D. 
In continuation of the subject of Percolation and Eco¬ 
nomy of Alcohol, annually presented to the Association 
for some years past, the writer offers an abstract of the 
results of his last year’s experience, premising that he 
has neither the time nor inclination—as time becomes 
more valuable—to defend his notions, judgment, or ac¬ 
curacy, or even to point out many of the deductions that 
might be drawn from the statements made as facts. 
It is not uncommon to hear observant physicians say 
that they do not obtain results from the fluid extracts 
corresponding in the proportion of minim for grain to 
the drug which they represent; and pharmacists who use 
the officinal formulas must be aware that the drugs are 
not entirely exhausted by the processes given. A critical 
inquiry into this subject, in this direction, is the chief 
object of this paper. 
A practical way to measure the rate and extent of ex¬ 
haustion by percolation has long been needed, and the 
want of some simple and easy plan has, perhaps more 
than any other obstacle, stood in the way of accurate 
knowledge and progress in the art of percolation. After 
many trials, some of which were described in previous 
papers, the method by specific gravity has thus far 
proved the most satisfactory and successful. But when 
applied by the hydrometer, or by the ordinary specific- 
gravity bottle, with the necessary calculations, it is too 
abstruse and complicated for common usage. 
It is to a more plain and simple application of the 
principle of specific gravity that attention is now to be 
directed, and the formula may be stated as follows :—In 
* Read before the American Pharmaceutical Association 
at the meeting at Baltimore, 1871. 
