Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  \ 
August,  1 918.  * 
Editorial. 
551 
full  recognition  of  the  great  service  rendered  to  mankind  by  the 
Pharmacist. 
Such  a  campaign  is  urgently  necessary  and  should  have  been 
begun  years  ago. 
The  public  is  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  the  Pharmacist  is  the 
sole  agent  to  whom  must  be  entrusted  the  enforcement  of  so  much 
of  the  public  health  laws  as  relates  to  the  drugs  used  in  the  practice 
of  medicine.   Let  us  try  to  remove  that  ignorance. 
It  is  our  right  and  duty  to  demand  respect  for  the  service  ren- 
dered by  our  craft." 
While  much  has  been  accomplished  in  this  campaign  of  educa- 
tion, the  need  for  its  continuance  along  the  lines  then  advocated  by 
Dr.  Oldberg  is  still  very  apparent.  The  opposition  to  the  organiza- 
tion of  a  pharmaceutical  corps  in  the  United  States  Army  dem- 
onstrates how  little  progress  has  actually  been  made  in  the  educa- 
tion of  the  public  to  the  actual  relation  of  pharmacy  to  medicine  and 
the  importance  of  the  service  of  the  pharmacist  to  mankind. 
We  are  pleased  to  note  that  many  of  the  medical  journals  are 
now  giving  consideration  to  the  importance  of  pharmacy  as  a  col- 
lateral branch  of  medicine,  and  are  advocating  the  establishment  of 
the  army  pharmaceutical  corps  as  proposed  by  the  Edmonds  Bill, 
H.  R.  5531,  so  as  to  relieve  the  medical  officers  of  the  army  of  a  vast 
amount  of  non-medical  work  that  has  been  imposed  upon  them.  The 
following  editorial  from  the  Pennsylvania  Medical  Journal,  June, 
1918,  is  a  current  evidence  of  this. 
RECOGNITION  OF  PHARMACY. 
"  Practically  every  state  of  the  Union  has  a  law  which  provides 
that  those  who  furnish  drugs  to  the  public  shall  be  qualified  for  this 
professional  work.  In  our  Army  the  hospital  steward,  who  dis- 
penses the  medicines  ordered  by  the  physician  for  the  sick  soldier,  is 
detailed  from  the  ranks  without  requirement  of  pharmaceutical 
training. 
To  remedy  this  defect  and  thus  increase  the  efficiency  of  the 
Medical  Department  of  the  Army,  it  is  proposed  to  establish  a 
Pharmaceutical  Corps.  As  is  the  case  with  the  Dental  Corps,  the 
Sanitary  Corps  and  the  Ambulance  Corps,  this  corps  is  to  be  under 
the  command  of  the  Surgeon-General  of  the  Army. 
To  provide  for  this  recognition  of  pharmacy,  Representative  Ed- 
monds of  Pennsylvania  last  July  introduced  into  the  House  of  Rep- 
