PHARMACY  IN  GERMANY  AND  PRUSSIA. 
431 
tain  number  of  pharmaceutists,  specially  convoked  for  the  pur- 
pose. 
In  places  remote  from  the  schools  the  oath  might  be  adminis- 
tered with  the  same  forms  by  the  President  of  the  tribunal  of  the 
district. 
If  the  ceremony  of  taking  an  oath  is  allowed  to  be  of  any  in- 
fluence, this  ought  assuredly  to  attach  to  such  a  one  as  is  taken 
in  the  presence  of  the  profession,  of  the  body  charged  with  the 
supervision  of  the  practice  of  pharmacy,  of  the  magistrate  whose 
duty  it  is  to  prosecute  and  punish  any  who  may  be  guilty  of  in- 
fractions of  the  laws  relating  to  the  profession  ;  but  in  the  man- 
ner that  it  is  observed  at  the  present  time  this  ceremony  is  but 
an  emptv  formality,  to  which  the  pharmaceutist  who  is  supposed 
to  take  it  attaches  no  more  importance  than  the  functionary  who 
ought  to  receive  it. 
THE  TARIFF  FOR  THE  SALE  OF  MEDICINES. 
The  limitation  of  the  number  of  pharmaceutists  necessarily 
involves  the  establishment  of  a  fixed  price  for  medicines.  These 
prices  are  agreed  upon  and  regularly  revised  every  year  by  a 
commission  appointed  for  that  purpose  by  the  government.  If 
the  price  of  any  important  drugs  undergo  any  considerable 
alteration,  the  commission  make  a  corresponding  alteration  in 
the  price  of  medicines  prepared  with  them.  These  alterations 
are  published  by  the  government,  which  is  likewise  bound  to 
transmit  to  the  commission  the  current  price  of  drugs,  chemical 
products,  and  all  the  data  which  are  likely  to  be  useful  in  con- 
structing the  tariff.*  The  pharmaceutists  are  "compelled  to  ad- 
here strictly  to  the  prices  laid  down  in  the  tariff.  Generally 
speaking,  they  fulfil  this  duty  faithfully.  In  any  case,  the  de- 
tection of  any  false  charge  would  be  very  easy,  for  the  pharma- 
*The  tariff  includes  not  only  the  price  of  simple  medicines,  but  likewise 
the  chirges  for  manipulations. 
The  Prussian  tariff,  which  is  especially  alluded  to  here,  is  not  adopted 
throughout  Germany.  It  varies  like  the  Pharmacopoeia  in  each  State,  and 
frequently  within  very  circumscribed  localities.  These  differences  in  the 
price  of  medicines  have  recently  been  taken  into  consideration  by  the  phar- 
maceutists, and  at  a  congress  held  at  Frankfort,  on  the  23d  of  September, 
1852,  to  which  all  the  pharmaceutists  of  Germany  were  convoked,  it  was 
seriously  discussed  whether  petitions  should  not  be  addressed  to  the  differ- 
ent governments  for  the  establishment  of  one  uniform  tariff  and  pharmaco- 
poeia for  the  whole  country. 
