PHARMACEUTICAL ETHICS. 
143 
to the pharmaceutist, though inexplicable to the customer, where there is no 
mistake whatever. A few words of sensible explanation will clear the difficulty, 
and confidence be restored. May I ask you, when such a complaint is brought 
against a brother chemist, not to be too mysterious on the grand occasion, and 
leave suspected what you dare not hint ?—for should the true nature of the case 
transpire, the customer will not easily forget the circumstance, and your most 
effective attitudes will be carefully reproduced with comic exaggeration before 
many a domestic audience. 
There is a point which would suggest itself to few writers, but it is one with 
which I have been personally thrown in contact. Many excellent pharmaceutists 
are exceedingly fond, on the slightest provocation, of perishing at the stake : 
their principles are so rigid, that nothing short of Smithfield is equal to the 
most trivial occasion. There are floating about certain foolish formulas, chiefly 
of French and German extraction, which from time to time find their way to 
distressed dispensers. The originals may be found in antique English works, 
and in that disgrace to modern pharmacy, the Paris Codex of 1837. I once 
had piles of such recipes in my possession, amounting to several folio manuscript 
volumes, which it was the wisdom of a former age. to copy, as it would have 
been the folly of this to keep. When these outrageous formulae, with their 
multitudinous-ingredients, come to be dispensed, what is the duty of the phar¬ 
maceutist? I say he has no duty to perform ; he must arrange as best he may 
between the customer and himself. If the handwriting be to him a mystery, 
and he has no knowledge of the main ingredients, let him say so honestly, but 
in a manner that will in no way reflect upon his personal capacity as a com¬ 
petent dispenser. 
There is no call for the martyr spirit, or for an overstrained high notion of 
strict pharmacy ; and if a brother has ventured on a task which he himself was 
unwilling to undertake, let him not be too virtuously indignant .should he 
chance to find that some utterly useless ingredient has been misunderstood ; 
and if a dried viper more or less has been wanting in the precious medley, let 
him reflect liumanum est errare^ and by a shade of pleasantry, or a grain of tact, 
let him both smile away the discrepancy of his own preparation, as well as 
screen the reputation of a fellow-worker, who was doubtless profoundly incon¬ 
venienced as to the best method of proceeding. 
The law of accommodation runs into another subject, the possibility by mutual 
concession of the establishment of an universal tariff. The idea is grand, most 
profoundly ethical, and theoretically a great boon. T believe it myself to be im¬ 
possible, and practically most undesirable. I am a\vare that such a system is 
successfully carried out abroad, for definite reasons not applicable to ourselves, 
and into which I cannot enter, as I mean to stick to English Pharmacy. I am 
aware also that an approximative tariff* has been attempted by some London 
houses, but they happened to have similar trade instincts, and were not alto¬ 
gether unequal in reputation. I have further been informed that the plan has 
been tried in Scotland, though perhaps the less we say about that the better. 
Allowdng all this, certain facts remain,— 
1. The varying estimation of the money value different men place on their 
own skill and exertions. 
2. There is the great abstract truth that the cost of producing and supplying 
power varies according to geographical and local circumstances, of which we, as 
pharmaceutists, have a well-known instance in the price of coal. Let three 
manufacturers of equal ability and care attempt to work a still. The one at 
Nottingham will surpass the most economical arrangements of his London 
brother, if, indeed, the latter be not altogether extinguished on learning how 
little Newcastle gives for coals. 
This is the very principle of manufacturing industry. Certain counties are 
