438 
PHARMACY  IN  GERMANY  AND  PRUSSIA. 
penalty,  and  would  admit  of  no  intermediate  course  between  a 
tacit  approbation  and  a  legal  prosecution.  There  are,  however, 
a  multitude  of  circumstances  relating  to  the  management  of  a 
pharmacy,  or  the  quality  of  medicines,  which  may  call  for  notice, 
instances  of  involuntary  negligence,  which,  if  tolerated,  might 
ultimately  prove  injurious  to  the  public,  although  not  of  suffi- 
cient gravity  to  justify  the  institution  of  legal  proceedings 
against  the  pharmaceutist.  Admonition  is,  indeed,  sometimes 
given  by  the  inspectors  themselves ;  but  being  merely  verbal, 
and  wanting  in  any  kind  of  legal  recognition,  is  not  so  likely  to 
produce  the  desired  effect, 
SECRET  REMEDIES. 
After  what  has  already  been  said,  it  is  scarcely  necessary  to 
state  that  the  pharmaceutists  of  Germany  are  interdicted  from 
selling  or  announcing  for  sale  any  secret  remedy ;  nevertheless 
they  sometimes  furnish  these  remedies  on  the  authority  of  a  phy- 
sician's prescription. 
In  France  the  law  with  regard  to  this  point  is  the  same,  but 
it  is  not  carried  into  effect.  A  decree  of  the  18th  of  August, 
1810,  prescribed  the  conditions  which  were  to  be  observed  in 
making  known  the  formulae  for  new  and  useful  remedies.  But 
the  wise  provisions  of  this  decree  have  not  been  taken  advantage 
of.  Instead  of  following  them  out  in  their  strictest  sense,  the 
legislature  has  reserved  the  dangerous  right  of  granting  to  cer- 
tain inventors  an  authority  to  vend  and  advertise  their  medi- 
cines. The  granting  of  these  privileges,  to  which  is  attached  a 
pecuniary  consideration,  far  greater  than  that  of  a  pharmaceuti- 
cal concession  in  Germany,  is  not  subject  to  any  conditions. 
Neither  the  medical  collegiate  bodies  nor  the  juries  charged  with 
the  supervision  of  pharmaceutical  affairs,  are  consulted  on  the 
occasion.  And  further,  these  privileges  have  the  great  objection 
of  being  unlimited  in  duration ;  so  that,  even  at  the  present 
time,  there  are  being  sold,  under  the  sanction  and  patronage  of 
the  government,  the  vilest  compounds,  which  are  both  antiquated 
and  inferior  to  any  that  can  be  prepared  by  a  rational  applica- 
tion of  pharmaceutical  knowledge,  but  which  have  acquired  a 
certain  prestige  in  the  eyes  of  the  vulgar,  from  the  government 
sanction,  and  more  especially  from  the  mystery  in  which  they  are 
enveloped. 
