Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  "I 
October,  1904.  J 
Pharmacy  and  Chemistry. 
473 
La  Pharmacie  Centrale  de  France,  also  less  known  as  the  Phar. 
macie  Centrale  des  Pharmaciens.  Many  in  this  country  have  heard 
in  a  hazy  way  of  this,  the  greatest  co-operative  business  ever  floated. 
Conditions  of  Pharmacy  changed  rapidly  in  the  beginning  of  last 
century;  so  much  so  that  the  great  representatives  of  the  art, 
Vauquelin,  Soubeiran  and  others  conceived  of  a  central  pharmacy 
of  national  importance,  where  drugs,  chemicals  and  preparations 
could  be  obtained  cheaply  and  of  high  quality.  Testing  of  bought 
goods  often  cost  them  more  in  time  than  the  goods  themselves  were 
worth,  why  not  have  all  our  goods  tested  at  the  Pharmacie  Centrale 
by  men  doing  this  only  ? 
But  these  dreams  were  premature.  It  took  the  great  pharmacist 
Dorvault,  fifty  years  later,  to  start  the  ball  a-rolling,  and  it  is  rolling 
still.  This  great  man  said  (how  truly  it  also  applies  to  our  business): 
"  The  scarcity  of  students  and  obstacles  of  a  material  nature  make 
it  possible  for  a  few  pharmacists  only  to  make  all  their  preparations 
themselves.  Without  doubt  it  would  be  desirable  to  see  the  custom 
of  the  old  pharmacy  followed :  that  is,  that  all  the  compounded 
medicaments  leaving  a  shop  were  really  made  therein.  But  greater 
and  greater  are  the  number  of  pharmacists  that  demand  from  the 
wholesale  drug  house  those  preparations  that  take  time,  or  are  dif- 
ficult to  make.  Chemical  products  are  becoming  day  by  day  more 
a  part  of  the  materia  medica,"  etc.  In  other  words.  Dorvault,  in 
his  appeal  to  the  pharmacists  of  France,  complained  that  the  phar- 
macist could  no  longer  make  his  own  preparations  profitably ;  that 
making  chemicals  was  even  worse.  He  correctly  goes  on  to  state 
what  little  guarantee  his  brothers  that  bought  goods  from  their  then 
wholesalers  had,  so  far  as  purity  and  the  conformity  to  the  Codex 
was  concerned.  Why  should  not  the  pharmacists  make  one  great 
Pharmacie,  in  which  each  had  stock  and  had  a  voice  demanding 
that  all  must  be  made  of  high  quality,  that  the  Codex  should  be 
followed  to  the  letter,  and  that  goods  sent  out  be  standard — that  is, 
tested.  That  stock  could  only  be  held  by  those  who  bought  from 
the  Pharmacie  ;  in  other  words,  Dorvault  planned  a  co-operative 
company  that  was  one  in  the  strictest  sense  of  the  word.  To-day 
the  capital  stock  amounts  to  10,000,000  francs. 
The  Pharmacie  Centrale  manufactures  all  preparations  of  the 
Codex;  it  deals  in  pure  drugs  and  manufactures  chemicals.  Its 
stockholders  can  come  and  study  in  its  laboratories,  and  it  accepts 
