582 
Progress  in  Pharmacy. 
(  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
(  December,  1904. 
Maryland  College  of  Pharmacy  with  the  University  of  Maryland ; 
the  inauguration  of  an  Association  of  State  Boards  of  Pharmacy, 
at  the  recent  meeting  of  the  A. Ph.  A.  at  Kansas  City;  the  admission 
of  pharmacists  as  members  of  the  Section  of  Pharmacology  of  the 
American  Medical  Association.  In  addition  to  these  several  import- 
ant events,  there  is  also  to  be  noted  a  continued  increase  in  the 
feeling  of  mutual  respect  and  regard,  among  members  of  the  pro- 
fession or  calling,  that  is  so  essential  to  the  making  of  any  degree 
of  progress  in  a  professional  way.  Strange  as  it  may  seem,  this 
particular  feeling  of  mutual  regard  has  been  developed  most  suc- 
cessfully in  connection  with  recent  efforts  to  improve  commercial 
conditions,  and  was  particularly  evident  at  the  sixth  annual  meeting 
of  the  National  Association  of  Retail  Druggists,  held  in  St.  Louis, 
Mo.,  from  October  ioth  to  14th,  inclusive.  This  convention  is  said 
to  have  been  the  largest  national  gathering  of  retail  pharmacists 
ever  held  in  this  country. 
While  the  business  meetings  of  this  association  were  confined 
entirely  to  the  consideration  of  commercial  problems,  the  meeting 
of  the  various  members,  in  a  social  way,  coupled  with  the  very 
unique  educational  features  of  the  Louisiana  Purchase  Exposition, 
must  necessarily  have  been  of  additional  advantage  to  the  pharma- 
cists who  were  fortunate  enough  to  be  able  to  attend. 
Of  the  Louisiana  Purchase  Exposition  as  an  educational  feature,  it 
will  not  be  necessary  to  do  more  than  call  attention  again  to  the 
series  of  interesting  descriptive  articles  that  have  appeared  in  this 
Journal  during  the  past  months. 
Among  the  more  interesting  happenings  in  the  domain  of 
abstract  science  the  most  important,  probably,  is  the  more  general 
acceptance  of  what  is  usually  referred  to  as  The  New  Theory  of 
Matter.  One  of  the  more  popular  expositions  of  this  new  theory 
was  given  by  the  Right  Hon.  A.  J.  Balfour,  the  Prime  Minister  of 
Great  Britain,  in  his  address,  as  president,  before  the  British  Asso- 
ciation for  the  Advancement  of  Science.  (Phar.  Jour.,  August,  1904, 
page  297.)  He  says :  "  To-day  there  are  those  who  regard  gross 
matter,  the  matter  of  everyday  experience,  as  the  mere  appearance 
of  which  electricity  is  the  physical  basis,  who  think  that  the  elemen- 
tary atom  of  the  chemist,  itself  far  beyond  the  limits  of  direct  per- 
ception, is  but  a  connected  system  of  monads  or  subatoms  which 
are  not  electrified  matter,  but  electricity  itself ;  that  these  systems 
