PHARMACY  IN  PIEDMONT. 
549 
seek  to  rival  their  less  intelligent  neighbor.  This  tariff,  open 
to  public  inspection  in  every  pharmacy,  has  for  its  end  the  pre- 
vention of  exorbitant  prices,  by  a  fixed  standard,  unaffected  by 
the  fluctuations  which  continually  occur  in  almost  every  pro- 
duct, and  which  in  reality  has  the  effect  of  creating  imposition 
rather  than  subduing  it ;  thus  the  authorized  price  of  quinine  is 
two  shillings  and  sixpence  the  scruple,  camphor  more  than  a 
shilling  an  ounce,  which  could  be  sold  for  half  the  price,  while 
many  products  in  this  anomalous  scale  are  marked  much  lower 
than  cost  price.  Leaving  Turin,  with  its  neat-looking  phar- 
macies, decorated  with  mahogany  fittings,  white  marble  counters, 
and  graceful  urn-like  vases,  rich  but  not  gaudy,  one  is  surprised 
at  the  extreme  poverty  one  encounters  at  Genoa,  the  richest 
city  in  the  state,  and  of  a  commercial  importance  exceeding  any 
other  town  on  the  Mediterranean,  Marseilles  excepted.  The 
best  chemists'  shops  in  the  place,  to  which  the  much-vaunted 
establishment  of  Mojon  scarcely  forms  an  exception,  resemble 
the  spezierie  in  the  almost  deserted  districts  of  Vicenza  and 
Verona,  where  one  feels  oppressed  by  a  sense  of  poverty  or 
some  worse  curse,  resulting  from  Austrian  domination,  which 
seems  to  cripple  the  vitality  of  every  enterprize — boutiques  that 
that  would  disgrace  the  oft-calumniated  districts  of  St.  Giles  and 
the  Minories.  This  indigence  is  accounted  for  at  Genoa  by  the 
active  competition  of  several  wholesale  drug  warehouses,  which, 
besides  alimenting  the  provinces  with  their  products  in  parcels 
resembling  the  «  foul  linen  "  of  some  disorderly  bachelor  tied  up 
by  the  four  corners,  retail  to  the  Genoese  public  a  buon  prezzo, 
much  to  the  detriment  of  the  legitimate  vendors.  But  it  is  in 
the  interior  where  the  pitiful  condition  of  our  brethren  would 
draw  forth  sympathy  from  the  most  uncharitable,  where  Romeo 
would  have  found  a  hero  at  every  step  "in  tatter'd  weeds," 
with  overwhelming  brows,  the  type  of  that  fragile  wretch  at 
Mantua  who  sold  poison  against  the  law,  forced  by  grievous 
fortune  to  confess  "  my  poverty  but  not  my  will  consents."  It 
is  at  Tortano,  Voghera,  Aste,  the  land  of  effervescing  white 
wine  and  shoeless  women,  Savona,  Moriana,  Pallanza,  where 
almost  every  pharmacy  tells  a  tale  of  woe  ;  its  small  front  filled 
with  miniature  squares  of  glass,  painted  black,  often  untouched 
since  its  foundation,  as  if  in  mourning  for  a  liberal  profession 
