Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  i 
November,  1910.  J 
Pharmacy,  A  Profession. 
53i 
educational  system  proposed  by  the  National  Syllabus  Committee 
will  have  to  know  enough  of  medicine  to  warrant  his  intelligently 
prescribing  and  recommending  medicines,  or  the  medical  profession 
will  have  to  be  educated  to  appreciate  a  true  profession  of  pharma- 
cology.   Both  suggestions  appeal  to  me  as  worthy  of  consideration. 
Standardization. — The  professional  ideal  includes  a  pharma- 
copoeia, dispensatories,  text-books,  and  colleges  of  pharmacy  or 
pharmacology.  Until  the  Pure  Food  and  Drugs  Act  of  June  30, 
1906,  went  into  effect,  conformity  with  the  standards  of  the  U.  S. 
Pharmacopoeia  was  purely  voluntary.  This  was  an  excuse  for  each 
manufacturer,  little  or  big,  to  set  up  a  standard  of  his  own,  and  the 
ill  effects  resulting  therefrom  have  given  rise  to  the  condition  of 
mind  on  the  part  of  physicians  known  as  therapeutic  nihilism.  The 
enforcement  of  the  federal  Act  mentioned,  aided  by  State  legislation 
of  the  same  sort,  will  do  much  toward  overcoming  the  ill  effects  of 
lack  of  standardization.  The  final  end  of  any  product  worthy  of 
consideration  as  a  therapeutic  agent  should  be  its  incorporation  into 
the  U.S.P.  or  N.F. 
Legislation. — One  of  the  most  important  suggestions  regarding 
pharmacal  and  medical  legislation  ever  made  in  this  country  is 
to  be  found  in  the  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States,  in  the  case  of  Worden  vs.  the  California  Fig  Syrup  Co.,  No. 
35,  October  Term,  1902,  as  follows: 
"  Many,  if  not  all,  of  the  States  of  this  Union  have  enactments 
forbidding  and  making  penal  the  practice  of  medicine  by  persons 
who  have  not  gone  through  a  course  of  appropriate  study  and 
obtained  a  license  from  a  board  of  examiners ;  and  there  is  similar 
legislation  in  respect  to  pharmacists,  and  it  would  seem  to  be  incon- 
sistent and  to  defeat  such  salutary  laws,  if  medical  preparations, 
often  and  usually  containing  powerful  and  poisonous  drugs,  are 
permitted  to  be  widely  advertised  and  sold  to  all  who  are  willing  to 
purchase.  Laws  might  properly  be  passed  limiting  and  controlling 
such  traffic  by  restraining  retail  dealers  from  selling  such  medicinal 
preparations,  except  when  prescribed  by  regular  medical  prac- 
titioners." 
The  foregoing  decision  would  force  retail  druggists  to  practise 
therapeutics  or  entirely  discontinue  the  recommending  of  medicines, 
and  as  it  would  be  practically  impossible  to  carry  on  the  retail  drug 
business  without  the  privilege  of  recommending  medicines  to  per- 
sons coming  to  the  drug  store  for  the  treatment  of  minor  complaints, 
