AmoSoberf  19171.'  '    Pharmaceutical  Corps  in  U.  S.  Army.  467 
Dispensing  of  Medicines  in  the  Government  Service  Not  in 
Accordance  with  State  Pharmacy  Laws. 
The  dispensing  of  potent  remedial  agents,  whether  in  civil  prac- 
tice or  in  the  military  service,  should  be  restricted  entirely  to  those 
who  have  been  especially  educated  and  trained  as  compounders  and 
dispensers  of  medicines.  This  principle  is  so  thoroughly  estab- 
lished that  the  States,  and  likewise  the  District  of  Columbia  and 
our  insular  possessions,  in  the  exercise  of  their  police  power,  have 
by  legal  enactment  provided  for  boards  of  pharmacy  to  examine 
and  license  those  to  whom  authority  only  is  given  to  compound  and 
dispense  medicines. 
The  Army  medical  supplies  necessarily  include  such  poisonous 
drugs  or  their  preparations  as  aconite,  atropine,  belladonna,  cocaine, 
colchicum,  hyoscyamus,  morphine,  nux  vomica,  opium  and  strophan- 
thus.  The  dispensing  of  these  in  the  army  is  not  only  "  done  by 
non-commissioned  officers  of  the  Medical  Department,"  but  quite 
commonly  by  those  whose  lack  of  education  and  training  would 
preclude  them  from  the  examinations  of  any  Board  of  Pharmacy. 
Surely  the  soldier  is  entitled  to  pharmaceutical  service  and  protec- 
tion equal  at  least  to  that  which  his  State  provides  for  him  in  civil 
life. 
Danger  in  Following  the  Errors  of  the  British  Army  Medi- 
cal Department. 
Unfortunately,  the  United  States  has  copied  the  methods  of  the 
British  Army  Medical  Department,  whose  service  has  been  de- 
nounced at  home  as  "  obsolete,"  "  incompetent "  and  "  inefficient." 
Great  Britain  and  the  United  States  are  the  only  two  prominent 
nations  whose  army  medical  service  does  not  provide  for  an  organ- 
ized pharmaceutical  corps. 
In  England  this  serious  defect  has  been  forcefully  pointed  out 
and  the  comparisons  made  with  the  well  organized  and  equipped 
medical  and  pharmaceutical  corps  of  the  continental  armies  have 
not  been  at  all  creditable  to  their  home  government.  The  "  Phar- 
maceutical Journal  and  Pharmacist "  of  London  in  a  recent  editorial 
states :  "  The  British  Pharmaceutical  Council  has  already  been  com- 
pelled to  report  several  cases  of  poisoning  that  had  occurred  in  hos- 
pitals because  of  untrained  dispensers." 
The  investigations  of  the  causes  of  the  failure  of  the  British 
