202 
THE  PHARMACEUTIST  AS  A  MERCHANT. 
items  may  lesson  your  ability  to  keep  a  full  assortment  of 
goods. 
It  is  shown  in  guiding  the  market  yourself,  not  letting  it 
guide  you  ;  strive  to  lead  the  tastes  of  your  customers  towards 
those  kinds  or  qualities  of  goods  which  you  know  to  be  best  for 
them,  better  than  they  themselves  do.  I  hold  this  to  be  a 
duty  which  none  of  us  should  be  indifferent  to. 
Business  tact  is  shown  in  so  individualizing  your  business 
that  everywhere  possible  the  articles  sold  by  you  should  repre- 
sent you,  not  some  one  else ;  make  everything  yourself  that  it 
is  at  all  practicable  for  you  to  make,  and  if  your  skill  is  such 
that  whatever  you  make  represents  the  best  of  like  articles, 
then  each  item  of  such  sold  is  a  standing  advertisement  for  you 
to  win  additional  trade.  I  am  a  firm  advocate  of  the  practice 
of  each  Pharmacy  being  a  producing  one ;  it  is  no  credit  to  a 
man,  who  has  been  well  educated  in  this  art,  to  be  contented 
to  live  long  and  sell  only  the  products  of  others'  industry, 
when  he  might  better  make  his  own,  increasing  his  business  and 
reaping  the  additional  portion  of  profit  thereby. 
Business  tact  so  displays  goods  as  to  make  the  most  of  them, 
so  in  a  measure  to  help  them  sell  themselves ;  therein  neatness 
and  taste  go  hand  in  hand  with  industry. 
While  business  tact  will  lead  the  merchant,  desiring  success, 
to  deal  in  all  the  articles  of  his  line  that  the  public  calls  for, 
there  are  in  ours  very  many  things  that,  which  to  do,  is  more 
or  less  to  compromise  with  the  right  and  wink  at  the  wrong  ; — 
the  alcoholic  stimulants  under  the  guise  of  medicated  bitters— 
the  regulating  remedies,  so  advertised  as  to  furnish  a  ready 
means  for  criminal  purposes — add  to  these  almost  the  whole 
list  of  the  so-called  patent  medicines ;  all  these  the  intelligent 
Pharmaceutist  knows  are  pernicious  in  their  effects  upon  the 
public  health,  and  yet  how  feeble  are  his  efforts  to  retard 
their  sale,  how  weak  his  protest  against  their  use.  If  you  do 
deal  in  such,  be  independent  enough  to  make  the  sales  of 
them  depend  upon  the  natural  law  of  demand,  and  not  on  your 
efforts ;  do  not,  above  all  things,  ever  endorse  them  with  breath 
of  praise. 
About  advertising,  that  is  also  a  legitimate  means  of  making 
yourself  known,  but  how  best  to  do  it  to  reap  the  largest  re- 
