106 
Pharmacy  in  India. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
Feb.,  1887. 
night,  and  when  serving  a  customer,  you  are  compelled  to  unlock  a  case  before 
you  can  get  at  the  goods.  Quinine  and  expensive  chemicals  are  also  under 
lock  and  key.  The  natives  in  the  government  dispensaries  stole  so  much  qui- 
nine that,  to  protect  itself,  the  government  have  all  their  quinine  colored 
pink,  which  effectually  prevents  any  one  from  disposing  of  it.  As  for  lying, 
they  are  professionals,  from  the  compounder  to  the  lowest  menial,  and 
they  can  hatch  up  a  lie  in  a  twinkling.  There  is  a  man  (Chowkedar),  who 
sleeps  on  the  verandah  at  night  to  receive  any  chits  that  may  come  *>nd  also 
to  guard  the  place. 
In  the  Bombay  Presidency  the  European  clerk  has  a  still  better  time  of 
it  as  Portugese  compounders  are  mostly  employed,  and  they  write  their  own 
labels,  copy  the  prescriptions  and  do  not  require  checking.  But  what  is  most 
to  be  commended  in  the  business  in  India  are  the  hours.  Here  in  Lahore  we 
open  at  eight  o'clock  and  close  at  six.  One  hour  is  allowed  for  breakfast,  one 
for  dinner  or  lunch,  and  a  cup  of  tea  is  brought  into  the  shop  about  four 
o'clock  ;  close  on  Saturday  afternoon  at  two,  and  never  open  at  night  or  on 
Sunday.  In  Simla,  in  the  Himalayas,  where  I  served  two  years,  in  winter  we 
opened  at  nine  and  closed  at  five  in  the  afcernoon. 
It  is  a  poor  place  to  apprentice  a  white  boy.  From  his  earliest  days  all  his 
work  is  done  by  natives,  and  when  he  comes  into  a  shop  he  thinks  he  is  be- 
ing made  a  menial  if  called  upon  to  do  anything  servants  could  do.  So  he  gets 
no  practical  experience  in  the  rudiments,  learns  the  business  in  a  superficial 
way  and  would  not  be  fit,  when  three  years  in  the  business,  to  take  the  place 
of  a  six  months'  apprentice  at  home.  But  don't  let  any  one  who  hears  these 
lines  come  to  India  on  a  speculation.  In  the  first  place  the  climate  is 
against  you.  Should  you  be  on  a  Plains'  station  during  the  summer  you  must 
be  under  a  Punkha — a  large  fan,  which  swings  backward  and  forward  above 
your  head,  creating  a  breeze — all  day  and  all  night.  One  is  over  your  head 
in  the  dispensary,  another  in  the  shop  proper,  one  over  your  dining  table, 
and  one  over  your  bed,  and  this  last  is  the  one  which  causes  one  to  forget  the 
commandments  if  anything  in  the  world  does.  You  go  to  sleep  with  the 
punkha  coolie  giving'you  a  fine  breeze.  After  an  hour  he  falls  asleep  and  you 
awake  in  a  profuse  perspiration  and  with  a  muttered  ejaculation  shy  a  boot  at 
his  head,  which  effectually  wakens  him  for  another  hour.  And  thus  goes  on 
the  night  and  the  poor  punkha  coolie  in  the  morning  is  only  too  glad  to  get 
away  and  soothe  his  bruises. 
It  is  difficult  to  get  a  situation.  I  came  to  India  knowing  nothing  whatever 
of  the  country  nor  anybody  in  it.  I  found  but  three  chemist  shops  in  Cal- 
cutta employing  Europeans,  and  this  is  the  largest  city  in  India.  Then  I  re- 
ceived the  awful  information  that  every  chemist  brought  his  assistant  (drug 
clerk)  out  from  England  on  an  agreement,  passage  paid  out  and  back,  and  the 
clerk  to  stop  with  his  employer  three,  four  or  five  years  as  the  case  may  be. 
In  three  weeks  I  was  fortunate  enough  to  secure  a  vacancy,  but  I  might  have 
been  six  months  without  even  hearing  of  one.  For  a  clerk  to  leave  at  the  end 
of  his  agreement  long  notice  must  be  given,  allowing  his  employer  ample  time 
to  bring  out  another  man  from  England.  Lastly  your  salary  varies,  a  very 
distressing  fact.  The  rupee,  the  coin  used  in  India — silver — fluctuates.  When 
I  came  to  India  it  was  worth  one  shilling  and  eight  pence — 40  cents ;  then  it 
went  down  to  1.6,  then  to  less  than  1.4  (32  cents),  and  now  it  is  at  one  and  six 
