47  6 
Editorial. 
{Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
Sept.,  1877. 
cresy,  are  even  used  at  the  present  time.  We  do  not  apprehend  that  any  of  the 
nostrums  of  the  present  day  will  carry  the  names  of  their  originators  to  an  admiring 
posterity,  not  even  the  Warburg's  tincture  which  has  recently  acquired  so  much 
notoriety,  and  which  claims  to  have  revived  one  of  the  fairest  representatives  of 
polypharmacy  (see  page  383)  after  a  century's  peaceful  slumber  5  a  resurrection 
requiring  a  firm  faith,  to  be  regarded  as  having  produced  more  than  the  spectre  of 
its  former  self. 
Fraudulent  medicines  may  be  exposed  and  nostrums  denounced  as  both  should 
be  ;  but  a  class  of  preparations  has  gradually  gained  a  foothold  which  differ  from 
those  of  the  other  two  classes  and  yet  frequently  resemble  the  one  or  the  other. 
We  refer  to  what  we  regard  as  semi-proprietary  medicines,  which  are  often  errone- 
ously, in  our  opinion,  called  specialties.  A  physician  may  devote  himself  specially 
to  diseases  of  the  eye  or  ear,  etc.,  and  yet  he  has  no  secret,  save  the  expertness  which 
is  the  reward  of  his  special  devotion.  It  is,  or  rather  it  should  be,  similar  in  phar- 
macy. The  manufacture  of  many  medicinal  chemicals,  which  formerly  was  one  of 
the  most  important  branches  of  pharmacy,  has  been  transferred  to  the  specialist,  be- 
cause the  continued  attention  given  to  the  complicated  processes  has  necessarily 
made  him  a  greater  expert  than  the  apothecary  can  hope  to  be  by^using  such  a  pro- 
cess but  once  in  a  while  5  yet  the  processes  are  well-known  by  which  the  same 
results  are  obtainable.  We  can  understand  that  one  may  have  special  facilities  for 
the  powdering  of  drugs,  for  preparing  medicinal  extracts,  for  the  coating  of  pills, 
etc.,  and  that  such  and  similar  articles  be  prepared  as  specialties  by  pharmacists  or 
druggists  with  the  view  of  supplying  others.  But  with  the  manufacture  of  pseudo- 
chemicals  and  the  host  of  so-called  elegant  preparations  we  at  once  enter  upon 
dangerous  ground. 
It  should  never  be  left  out  of  view  that  pharmacy  is,  and  should  be,  no  less  a  lib- 
eral profession  than  medicine,  and  that,  from  an  ethical  standpoint,  a  pharmacist 
has  as  little  right  to  secrecy,  or  to  take  advantage  of  his  observations,  as  the  physi- 
cian }  the  natural  advantage  given  by  greater  expertness  in  any  special  direction 
cannot  fail  to  be  secured  for  him. 
We  are  aware  that  the  covetousness  and  indolence  of  many  pharmacists  have 
materially  aided  in  bringing  about  the  state  of  things  under  which  medicine  suffers 
no  less  than  pharmacy;  indolence,  because  they  purchased  galenics  which  they 
could  have  made  themselves ;  covetousness,  because  in  purchasing  they  have  acted 
as  though  purchasing  cheap  was  of  greater  importance  than  regard  for  quality.  The 
physician  has  a  right  and  it  is  his  duty  to  insist  upon  getting  every  thing  of  prime 
quality  and  of  the  officinal  standard  5  but  we  question  his  right  of  directing  the 
pharmacist  to  purchase  such  articles  which  he  can  prepare  himself,  or  to  buy  the 
products  of  certain  manufacturers.  In  its  beginning,  the  practice,  though  injudi- 
cious, was  perhaps  justifiable,  but  it  has  gradually  extended  so  that  it  is  no  longer 
confined  to  officinal  preparations,  but  embraces  a  large  number  of  articles  of  which 
neither  physicians  nor  pharmacists  know  anything  save  what  the  originators  choose 
to  tell  them.  Such  information  is  usually  given  with  an  appearance  of  frankness, 
which  on  closer  analysis  is  often  found  either  to  be  so  meagre  as  to  scarcely  differ 
from  the  assertions  accompanying  the  ordinary  nostrums,  or  so  ambiguous  and  mis- 
