426 
Editorial. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
Aug.,  I877. 
After  the  close  of  the  meeting  an  excursion  into  the  country  is  contemplated, 
occupying  one  or  two  days,  and  which  will  afford  opportunity  for  fishing  and  other 
recreations. 
On  the  home  trip  the  members  will  scatter  5  but  the  Secretary  has  been  informed 
that  some  contemplate  to  return  via  Montreal,  the  White  Mountains  and  Portland 
or  Boston  5  others  via  Montreal,  Lake  Champlain  and  Lake  George  to  Albany ; 
others  via  Alexandria  Bay  (Thousand  Isles)  and  Trenton  Falls  to  Albany,  and 
another  party  will  return  to  Suspension  Bridge  and  via  New  York  Central  Railroad 
to  Albany,  thence  by  the  Day  Line  of  steamers  down  the  Hudson  to  New  York. 
The  latter  party  can  obtain  round  trip  tickets  between  Suspension  Bridge  and 
Toronto  at  two  dollars.  Excursion  tickets  to  and  via  Niagara  Falls,  covering  either 
route,  are  issued  by  most  railroads. 
Physicians  and  Pharmacists. — On  various  occasions  we  have  dwelled  upon  the 
necessity  of  an  amicable  settlement  of  any  differences  of  opinion  or  causes  of  com- 
plaint between  the  two  professions,  and  but  recently  (May  number,  p.  269)  we  have 
referred  to  the  commendable  action  in  such  cases  of  the  physicians  and  the  phar- 
macists of  Antwerp  and  other  Belgian  cities,  which  is  well  worthy  of  imitation  in 
this  country.  If  such  a  spirit  of  conciliation  had  existed,  the  controversy  between 
the  two  professions  in  Alleghany  county,  Md.,  would  not  have  assumed  its  present 
shape,  and  much  annoyance  and  ill-feeling  would  have  been  prevented.  We  learn 
that  the  Medical  Society  of  that  county  has  passed  a  resolution,  declaring  "  that  it 
is  the  duty  of  the  members  of  this  Society  to  withdraw  their  prescriptions  from  any 
druggist  who  puts  up  any  nostrums,  or  who  prescribes  or  recommends  any  patent  or 
other  medicines  for  any  class  of  cases,  whether  grave  or  trivial. "  To  this  the  drug- 
gists have  replied  by  a  resolution  in  which  they  will,  "  in  the  alleviation  of  suffering 
amidst  all  classes,  pursue,  as  heretofore,  the  legitimate  mode  of  conducting  our  own 
affairs." 
There  are  just  causes  for  complaints  by  both  sides  in  many  localities,  both  city  and 
country.  It  is  a  cheap  virtue  to  raise  an  outcry  against  the  sale  of  proprietary 
medicines  ;  but  the  manufacturers  thereof  know  full  well  that  the  readiest  way  to 
introduce  them  and  insure  an  extensive  sale  throughout  the  country  is  through  the 
physicians,  a  large  number  of  whom  are  easily  persuaded  to  prescribe  or  use  in  their 
practice  almost  anything  that  comes  to  them  under  a  plausible  garb,  from  Warburg's 
Tincture  and  the  various  frauds,  which,  though  wholly  or  mainly  composed  of  cin- 
chonia,  sail  under  different  colors,  down  to  the  active  principles  of  the  brain  or  of 
the  gizzard.  Such  semi-proprietary  medicines  of  a  pretended  composition,  but  which 
can  be  manufactured  only  by  the  proprietor  of  the  secret,  we  consider  to  be  far  more 
dangerous  than  those  barefaced  impostures,  which  can  be  kept  afloat  only  by  the 
most  liberal  advertising  in  the  secular  and  religious  papers. 
The  so-called  counter  prescribing  is  another  favorite  hobby  with  some  physicians 
who  will  not  or  cannot  see  the  necessity  of  having  recognized  simple  remedies  for 
ordinary  ailments.  If  such  were  agreed  upon  by  the  medical  and  pharmaceutical 
professions  of  different  localities,  such  action  would  at  once  strike  a  blow  at  many 
nostrums  of  high  and  low  degree,  which  are  principally  used  in  trivial  cases.  And 
