186 
EDITORIAL. 
columns of our Professional Edifice should arise from the cities of the Old 
Dominion. 
Pharmacy in Louisville. — Louisville is one of the medical and pharma- 
ceutical centres of the Great West. "VVe are informed that the druggists 
and apothecaries of that city are on the eve of forming an association, also 
that the condition of the practice of pharmacy has very much advanced 
within a few years. To our brethren of Louisville, as to those of every 
American city, where associations do not exist, we would say : — Institute 
a Society ; the amount of private interests that will have to be surrendered 
will not amount to a tythe of the benefits accruing to the members when 
such associations acquire solidity, by a few years experience. 
Convention of 1852. What steps have been taken? — Nearly six months 
have passed since the meeting of the New York Convention in October last ; 
six months more will bring us to the period of the proposed gathering, and 
it is entirely proper to put the query — What has been done to 'promote the 
object in view ? We are not disposed to believe that, with the most favorable 
happening, an instantaneous change can be wrought in the condition of our 
professional ranks ; but we are prepared to avow the opinion that the cha- 
racter and actions of the ensuing Convention, small though it may be, will 
very much influence the future movements arising from them, and that 
delegates should be chosen whose experience, ability, and disinterested 
sympathy for the Profession, will induce them to place their best powers at 
the service of the Convention. 
The important questions for deliberation are not personal : individual 
honors, and love of popularity, are too apt on such occasions to obtrude 
themselves into the foreground : but they are such as these: — 1. By what 
means can the existing large number of ill qualified practicing pharmaceu- 
tists, every where over our country, be induced to improve themselves in 
education, or in the ability to give better service in their several spheres of 
action, without omitting their present duties? 2. What are the most effi- 
cient and best adapted means by which our apprentices, — the pharmaceutists 
of the future, — can receive the benefits of pharmaceutical education. 3. How 
far will the principle of association enable the better qualified to extend as- 
sistance to the deficient ? 4. What means are best calculated to sever the 
existing connection between pharmacy and quackery, and to induce 
apothecaries to repudiate the sale of secret remedies ? And lastly what sug- 
gestions can be offered to the Convention, by which it may hold out induce- 
ments sufficient to engage and direct the latent talent of our ranks, to such 
useful and interesting scientific objects as shall redound to the improvement 
of our profession at home, and its reputation abroad ? 
These are a few of the questions, which will naturally present themselves 
before the earnest delegate, and to the solution of which he will bring his 
