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misapplied ingenuity in the constant attempt to produce colourable imitations 
of preparations, secret or otherwise, which have gained reputation for some par¬ 
ticular chemist. Against this there is no human law; but the moral law, which 
is the law of God, says such practices are fraudulent, and beneath the dignity of 
every upright man, and they betray a paucity of inventive power, and it is more¬ 
over certain that the same skill might find more creditable as well as more re¬ 
munerative employment. 
Still some pharmaceutists are in bondage to a groundless fear ; they hesitate, 
under a strained sense of honour, to enter upon what they think pre-occupied, 
and therefore forbidden ground. “Why,” writes Mr. Giles, “should there be 
any speciality in pharmaceutical production ? The same laws will protect an in¬ 
vention in pharmacy as in mechanics, and when the law professes to deal with 
the matter, it is a question whether any other protection is needed. You may 
say ethics shall do what the law does not, and so it should in cases too refined 
for the law to deal with; but here the law does operate.” From the foregoing 
it is clear that while no one is justified in the fraudulent imitation of a patent 
right either in or out of the pale of pharmacy, yet no pharmaceutist can claim 
the exclusive manufacture of any special article in perpetuity, simply because a 
particular mode of working originally suggested itself to his mind. There is no 
law in trade or ethics to prevent a man making liquor 023ii to the best of his 
ability, any more than in the case of morphia and meconic acid. The most 
•scrupulous and conscientious chemist may get quinine and cinchonine from 
bark. What casuistry shall assign an arbitrary limit forbidding him to make a 
liquor? The whole world may make magnesia, light and heavy, calcined or 
carbonate, although Battley and Howard and Henry have been beforehand in 
the field. Let not the pharmaceutist shrink from the lawful use of the experience 
and labours of the past; which is no reason why he should sink into a mere 
copyist, and should not, like Columbus, sail out of the beaten track in search of 
land not hitherto discovered. 
There is a major ethical consideration that can only be treated in a minor key,— 
perfect civility to, and careful attention to the smallest wants of the poorest cus¬ 
tomer,'—a civility that should be expressed by words and manner. The ethics of 
civility to rich customers need scarcely be discussed : in that case, for ethics, read 
advantage. 
Our American brethren have taken tlie lead in drawing uj) a regular Code of 
Ethics. You will find the document in the ‘ Pharmaceutical Journal,’ Vol. XII. 
p. 369. 
They have also, I think, been most successful in giving directions about the 
last topic I have to mention in connection wdth shops ethics,—the mutual relation 
between the master and the assistant. 
For general rules I refer you to a pajDer republished in our Journal, called 
the “ Pharmaceutist as a Merchant” (vol. vi. p. 655, second series). The idea is 
admirable, and the literary execution quite equal to the design. 
Mr. Frederick Stearns, the author, seems to have steered most successfully 
between the Scylla of the high and dry, and the Charybdis of the goody-good. 
I refer you also to some excellent rules published at the end of Parrish’s ‘ Prac¬ 
tical Pharmacy it contains one difficult proposition, p, 676 :— 
“ Second General Regulation of the Store. During business hours all hands 
must be on their feet.” 
Rule XIII. is beyond our present standard. “Every apprentice will be ex¬ 
pected to become a graduate of the College of Pharmacy, and will be furnished 
with tickets of the College, and every opportunity for availing himself of the 
honour of the degree of that institution.” I do not feel called upon to dilate 
upon this question. There is such a wide difference in individual character, • 
that special rules seem to be impossible. After all, we shall scarcely get further 
