ON    AMERICAN  PHARMACY. 
117 
generation  owe  to  the  future,  and  on  the  fulfilment  of  which  the 
future  progress  of  our  art  depends. 
The  common  hond  of  union  which  these  duties  to  the  public  and 
each  other  and  the  community  of  interests  growing  out  of  them, 
seem  to  furnish,  has  until  recently  produced  no  such  general  union 
of  purpose  and  action  among  the  druggists  of  the  United  States  as 
might  have  been  anticipated. 
Indeed,  to  a  great  extent,  these  duties  and  obligations  so  abun- 
dantly acknowledged  abroad,  and  many  of  them  made  the  subject 
of  legal  enactments  in  Europe,  have  been  but  too  little  recognized 
here.  The  people  occupied  with  developing  the  natural  resources 
of  a  new  and  uncultivated  country  have  given  little  attention  to 
those  arts  and  accomplishments  which  are  inseparable  from  a  high 
state  of  civilization  and  refinement,  and  our  druggists,  like  most 
other  business  men,  have  looked  almost  exclusively  at  the  pecuni- 
ary relations  of  the  trade,  and  with  a  few  exceptions  in  the  large 
cities  have  had  no  special  concern  about  its  scientific  and  ethical 
relations. 
It  is  only  recently  that  we  are  beginning  to  find  out  the  great 
law  that  regulates  our  progress.  That  while  in  regard  to  the  ap- 
parent necessities  of  life  the  supply  always  follows  the  demand  ; 
in  regard  to  its  refinements  and  elegancies,  the  reverse  is  the  case; 
the  demand  grows  up  under  the  stimulus  of  increasing  supply.  A 
retrospect  of  the  last  thirty  years  is  full  of  instruction  in  this  par- 
ticular. '  Not  long  since  there  were  scarcely  half  a  dozen 
sets  of  apothecaries'  weights  in  Philadelphia.  There  were  so 
few  shops  that  could  be  depended  on,  that  prominent  physicians 
preferred  dispensing  their  own  remedies.  Even  the  best  druggists 
could  scarcely  make  a  respectable  show  of  bottles  upon  their 
shelves  from  the  paucity  of  the  Materia  Medica  then  in  use,  and 
the  chief  reason  that  made  the  business  lucrative,  was  its  asso- 
ciation with  other  branches  of  trade,  and  the  absence  of  any  great 
competition. 
The  establishment  of  Colleges  of  Pharmacy  in  Philadelphia, 
New  York,  and  Baltimore,  was  the  first  cause  of  favorable  change. 
The  members  of  these  institutions  by  association  learned  to  sink 
petty  jealousies  in  a  united  effort  for  the  common  good ;  they  set 
about  self  improvement,  and  commenced  to  teach  their  appren- 
tices how  to  become  better  chemists  and  pharmaceutists  than 
themselves.    They  called  forth  a  spirit  of  activity  in  the  field  of 
