Am.  Jour.  Pharm. ) 
December,  1910.  / 
Pharmacy,  a  Profession. 
563 
press,  not  from  Colliers  Weekly,  the  Ladies  Home  Journal,  and 
other  non- professional  publications. 
On  the  other  hand,  all  must  concede  that  centralization  is  the 
tendency  of  the  day  in  all  lines,  and  the  great  manufacturing  houses 
have  come  to  stay.  Nearly  every  manufactured  article  is  now  pro- 
duced on  a  large  scale  by  great  plants,  with  which  individual  houses 
working  on  a  small  scale  cannot  hope  to  compete,  and  as  standard- 
ization of  all  products  becomes  more  prevalent  the  small  manu- 
facturer will  have  still  less  chance  of  success.  The  cost  of  standard- 
izing one  pound  of  steel  as  to  carbon  content  is  as  great  as  the  cost 
of  standardizing  a  ton,  therefore  standardization  work  cannot  be 
economically  conducted  except  in  relation  to  large  outputs,  and  the 
same  principle  applies  to  materia  medica  products. 
This  evolutionary  process,  due  to  economic  conditions  and 
representing  advance  in  civilization,  is  by  no  means  completed. 
Whether  or  not  it  will,  end  in  socialism  remains  to  be  seen.  The 
socialization  of  medical  and  pharmacal  practice  has  its  advocates, 
but  this  phase  of  the  subject  is  outside  the  limits  of  my  lecture. 
THE  RETAIL  DRUGGIST  AS  A  MANUFACTURER. 
Under  a  professional  system,  with  its  common  standards  and 
freedom  from  monopoly,  all  retail  druggists  have  equal  chances  as 
manufacturers,  while  under  the  proprietary  system,  with  its  monopoly 
and  misleading  advertisements,  the  advantage  is  on  the  side  of  the 
manufacturers  of  nostrums,  therefore,  as  a  matter  of  self-interest, 
the  retail  druggists  should  favor  the  ideal  of  professional  pharma- 
cology. As  a  class,  however,  they  oppose  legislation  tending  to 
limit  the  nostrum  business,  possibly  because  each  druggist  dreams 
of  himself  becoming  a  nostrum  king. 
Many  prescriptions  call  for  ready-made  preparations  of  various 
kinds,  which  are  now  supplied  by  the  manufacturing  houses  in  the 
form  of  sugar-coated  and  gelatine-coated  pills,  tablets,  filled  capsules, 
etc.  Druggists  engaged  in  the  U.S. P.  and  N.F.  propaganda  hope 
that  doctors  will  discontinue  the  use  of  such  ready-made  products 
and  return  to  prescription  writing,  but  the  tendency  away  from 
polypharmacy  toward  the  more  scientific  use  of  drugs  is  as  unfa- 
vorable to  the  polypharmacy  extemporaneous  prescription  as  to  the 
ready-made  polypharmacy  prescription. 
Progress  in  pharmacotherapy  is  along  the  lines  of  standardized 
