(Editorial  ^Department. 
The  American  Pharmaceutical  Association. — The  period  when  this 
body  will  convene  is  rapidly  approaching.  In  accordance  with  the  Consti- 
tution, the  President  is  required  to  publish  a  call  at  least  three  months  prior 
to  the  time  of  meeting,  and  we  invite  attention  to  the  preceding  document 
issuing  from  that  officer. 
It  is  much  to  be  desired  that  the  next  meeting  of  the  Association  should 
be  full  and  interesting.    The  arduous  labors  of  organization  having  been 
accomplished,  the  coming  session  should  be  devoted  to  consolidating  the 
Association,  and  to  measures  calculated  to  promote  the  interest  of  Phar- 
macy throughout  the  country.    Members  will  come  to  the  meeting  with  a 
clearer  view  of  the  labor  before  them,  and  new  members  prepared  to  take 
part  at  once  in  the  business.  There  is  no  need  of  the  question  "  What  is  to 
be  done  V  but  there  is  need  to  know  ««  how  is  it  to  be  done  V    First,  we 
want  a  great,  uniting,  harmonizing,  liberalizing  and  enlightening  influence 
to  enter  the  profession;  to  soften  prejudices,  to  moderate  or  subdue  jealous- 
ies, to  liberalize  competition,  to  spread  knowledge  broad-cast,  to  excite  am- 
bition after  excellence,  and  to  call  forth  and  encourage  a  feeling  of  brother- 
hood among  pharmaceutists.    Speaking  for  the  entire  body  who  dispens 
medicines  in  the  United  States,  we  need  to  be  more  sensible  of  our  igno- 
rance of  what  constitutes  a  true  pharmaceutist;  we  lack  a  desire  to  excel  in 
our  calling  for  the  sake  of  the  profession;  we  require  a  more  liberal  basis  in 
our  intercourse  with  each  other,  by  which  unity  of  action  may  protect  us 
from  the  many  evils  flowing  out  of  an  excessive  competition,  and  we  need 
the  moral  courage  and  energy  that  will  rid  the  professional  boundaries  of 
the  incubus  of  quackery  and  charlatanry.    Further,  the  public  need  to  be- 
enlightened,  also.    The  people,  in  the  long  run,  will  adopt  the  rational 
side  of  a  question,  if  they  examine  both.    They  need  to  be  awakened  to  the 
advantages  arising  from  a  better  class  of  dispensers  of  medicines — who  are 
governed  by  principle  and  conscience  as  well  as  by  interest — who  will  re- 
fuse to  sell  them  bad  drugs  when  tempted  by  competition — and  who  will 
decline  to  furnish  them  with  quackery,  and  will  give  them  a  sufficient 
reason  for  so  doing.    The  position  of  apothecaries  and  druggists  in  the 
United  States,  as  regards  quack  medicines,  is  a  peculiar  one.    The  circum- 
stances of  a  sparsely  settled  country,  where  physicians  and  apothecaries  are 
thinly  scattered,  by  throwing  the  people  on  their  own  resources,  has  been 
one  of  the  most  powerful  causes  of  the  origin  and  growth  of  that  almost 
universal  disposition  to  seek  the  aid  of  this   class  of  medicines,  which 
boldly  promise  to  supercede  the  necessity  of  both  physician  and  apothecary, 
until  now  the  whole  community  is  tainted,  from  the  most  educated  members 
of  the  legal  and  clerical  professions,  down  through  the  mercantile,  manufac- 
