EDITORIAL. 
473 
juvants  as  it  is  that  of  apothecaries.  The  error  in  naming  a  drug 
driven  out  of  use  for  its  acrimony  and  the  variability  of  its  composi- 
tion, must  be  confessed  to  be  a  just  occasion  for  a  small  triumph.  I  never 
pretended  to  have  an  apothecary's  familiarity  with  the  mineral  salts  ;  and 
had  more  of  it  when,  many  years  ago,  I  was  placed  by  their  then  organ- 
ization as  apothecary  to  the  Pennsylvania  Hospital,  than  I  have  now. 
The  error  in  memory  arose  from  my  having  been  engaged  in  introducing, 
as  I  did  introduce,  the  precipitated  black  oxide  of  mercury  into  practice 
in  Philadelphia.  See  paper  by  Thomas  Evans,  in  an  old  number 
of  your  own  Journal  of  Pharmacy.  I  then  made,  tried  and  relinquished 
the  ammoniacal  precipitate  from  calomel.  But  which  is  the  more  im- 
portant error,  to  call  a  well-known  and  discarded  drug  a  triple  chloride 
instead  of  a  triple  nitrate,  or  to  cause  the  acrid  and  uncertain  article  to 
be  introduced  into  a  sick  person's  stomach,  instead  of  a  mild  and  uniform 
one  ?  I  grant  the  critic  the  advantage  that  this  was,  at  some  time  and 
by  somebody,  called  black  oxide,  (Merat  &  De  Lens,  iii.  364 ;)  but  the 
condemnations  in  the  same  page  are  abundantly  sufficient  to  more  than 
justify  the  advice  to  avoid  it,  given  in  Coxe's  and  later  Dispensatories.  I 
am  certain,  at  any  rate,  that  I  never  named  any  person  injuriously,  or 
attempted  to  lower  any  person's  reputation  about  it. 
From  a  recent  document,  I  learn  that  keeping  an  apothecary's  estab- 
lishment is  a  "  branch  of  the  art  of  healing."  Is  making  spinning  jennies 
a  branch  of  the  cotton  manufacture  ? 
The  reviewer's  censure  of  the  hoaxes  practised  by  members  of  his  own 
profession,  in  pages  380  and  381,  may  be  just  or  otherwise.  Of  these  he 
is  a  competent  and  fitting  judge,  and  I  am  none  whatever. 
I  nowhere  deny  the  negotiation  with  the  Country  Medical  Society. 
Being  merely  President  for  the  year,  and  this  affair  having  transpired 
several  years  before,  at  a  time  when  I  gave  my  whole  time  exclusively  to 
my  own  affairs,  I  could  not  remember  unimportant  circumstances,  which 
very  probably  occurrred  in  my  absence.  On  re-perusal  of  the  authentic 
documents,  the  imputation  implied  in  the  address,  of  a  fidgetty  desire  to 
speak  in  a  dictatorial  style  to  physicians,  I  confess,  still  appears  to  me  to 
be  correct.  It  is  not  worth  while  to  debate  about  the  difference  between 
il  ought  to"  and  "should." 
Mr.  Procter  winds  up  with  apprehensions  of  disaster  to  "Philadelphia 
Pharmacy,  if  it  was  regulated  by  the  views  of  Dr.  Ooates."  As,  in  the 
whole  address,  I  have  given  no  views  of  regulation  at  all,  but  only 
related  occurrences  and  proposed  questions  for  consideration,  I  do  not 
see  how  he  could  state  the  question,  or  how  he  could  find  out  what  my 
views  are,  when  I  never  expressed  any.  If  we  lived  in  a  vulgar  era,  I 
should  ascribe  this  to  the  reviewer's  imagination ;  but  in  the  present  day 
of  spiritualism  and  other  illuminations,  an  old  fogey  like  myself  cannot 
assume  that  responsibility. 
In  fine,  though  Mr.  Procter  introduces  motives,  I  shall  not  re- 
taliate by  impeaching  his  own  ;  but  I  will  beg  him  to  examine  himself,  in 
order  to  become  certain  whether  there  may  not  be  an  unconscious  im- 
pulse to  all  this  personality  and  severity,  and  whether  it  has  nothing  to 
do  with  sectarian  animosity. 
B.  H.  Coates. 
The  Sunday  Closing  Movement  in  Philadelphia. — Some  time  last 
spring  several  young  pharmaceutists  determined  to  call  a  meeting  of  their 
fellows,  and  ascertain  whether  any  steps  could  be  taken  which  would  in- 
