ON  J3STHETICAL  PHARMACY.  221 
iEsthetical  laws  apply  to  the  ornamentation  and  convenient 
arrangement  of  our  stores  and  laboratories,  to  the  display  of  our 
wares,  and,  above  all,  to  the  general  management  of  business, 
the  careful  elaboration  of  which  tends  beside  to  refine  the  man, 
to  develop  the  more  genial  qualities  of  human  nature,  the  social 
courtesies  that  help  to  place  him  among  gentlemen,  and  to  add 
dignity  to  his  chosen  profession. 
The  customer  most  indifferent  to  the  skilful,  scientific  details 
of  the  labors  of  a  dispenser,  will  notice  and  commend  the  simple 
elegance  of  a  package  nicely  wrapped,  or  a  bottle  neatly  finished; 
and  from  such  the  inference  is  apt  that,  where  elegance  is  consti- 
tutional, and  neatness  chronic,  there  skill  lives  ! 
The  fittings  and  the  furniture  of  a  dispensing  pharmacy  afford 
an  opportunity  to  study  and  apply  aesthetic  rules,  more  so  to  my 
mind,  than  in  the  ornamentation  of  any  other  place  of  business. 
It  is  a  matter  of  some  moment  how  to  combine  usefulness  and 
elegance  in  such  fittings,  and  we  find  too  many  examples  of  pro- 
prietors who,  actuated  by  the  laudable  desire  of  having  their 
premises  unique  or  original,  violate  the  simplest  aesthetical  rules 
by  over-doing  and  over-crowding,  or  else  carry  their  designs  into 
the  fantastic  and  absurd. 
The  following  may  be  an  approximation  to  the  true  aesthetic 
idea  in  such  matters. 
In  those  portions  of  the  permanent  fixtures  of  a  store  com- 
prised in  shelving,  cornices,  drawers,  counters,  casing,  etc.,  where 
capital  is  limited,  employ  straight  lines ;  classical  mouldings, 
few  and  simple  if  made  in  cheap  woods,  white  only  in  such  wood ; 
do  not  strive  to  imitate  oak,  rosewood,  or  mahogony  with  paint. 
When  greater  expenditure  is  allowable;  the  same  general  rules 
carried  out  in  real  fine  woods,  or  further  yet,  the  working  of  the 
cornices  in  bold  arches  or  curves  and  projections,  the  employ- 
ment of  carvings  not  too  elaborate,  panel  work,  brackets,  etc., 
serve  to  display  the  liberality  of  a  proprietor  within  sesthetic  rule, 
I  should  designate  that  style  of  ornamentation  where  gilded 
mouldings,  and  the  profuse  employment  of  embossed  stucco  work 
prevails,  as  the  "  Steamboat  style,"  as  vulgar  as  it  is  unreal. 
The  great  improvement  made  of  late  years  in  glass  shop  furni- 
