Am.  Tour.  Pharm. 
Sept.,  1918. 
Editorial. 
625 
given  consideration  to  this  as  a  possible  necessity  to  which  they  could 
willingly  subscribe.  The  standard,  however,  that  he  proposes  for 
such  a  differentiation  would  be  a  very  misleading  gauge  whose  re- 
sults wTould  be  so  fallacious  as  to  entirely  destroy  the  purpose  of  the 
proposer.  While  decrying  commercialism,  a  commercial  basis, 
nevertheless,  is  proposed  to  differentiate  between  the  professional 
and  the  commercial  drug  dealers.  The  volume  of  business  done  and 
"  a  minimum  compounding  of  prescriptions,"  "  in  which  at  least  four 
thousand  prescriptions  are  compounded  within  one  year,"  would  be 
very  misleading  criteria  by  which  to  determine  the  educational  and 
professional  qualifications  of  pharmacists,  It  not  infrequently  hap- 
pens that  the  most  capable  pharmacists,  professionally  educated  and 
thoroughly  equipped,  do  not  enjoy  the  largest  patronage. 
The  successful  pharmacist  has  to  meet  the  requirements  of  his 
environment  and  supply  the  needs  of  the  community  in  which  his 
business  is  located.  A  young  pharmacist  who  has  had  the  advantage 
of  a  good  preceptor  and  excellent  store  experience  and  who  has 
graduated  with  honor  from  the  college  of  pharmacy  and  readily 
passed  the  examination  of  the  state  board,  engages  in  business  in  a 
very  promising  location.  Filled  with  high  ideals  and  a  laudable  am- 
bition to  excel  in  his  profession,  he  takes  pride  in  his  model  modern 
equipment  for  prescription  compounding.  His  education,  ability, 
skill  and  facilities  all  justify  his  expectations  for  a  successful  busi- 
ness career.  After  several  years  of  close  application  to  business, 
through  no  fault  of  his  own,  he  is  confronted  with  altered  conditions 
beyond  his  control.  A  change  has  taken  place  in  the  character  of 
the  residents  of  his  neighborhood.  The  old  family  homesteads  may 
have  become  tenements  filled  with  foreign  born  population  or  the 
encroachment  of  business  may  have  converted  the  locality  into  a 
business  thoroughfare  with  only  transient  trade  or  perhaps  the  local- 
ity may  have  become  a  "  factory  district."  Moreover,  the  physicians 
in  the  neighborhood  have  ceased  to  write  prescriptions  and  are  now 
dispensing  ready  made  medicines  from  their  offices.  Thus,  by  these 
urban  changes  and  the  unethical  practice  of  medicine,  fate  decrees 
that  to  be  successful  in  his  business,  he  must  adjust  his  professional 
ideals  and  aspirations  to  the  changed  conditions  of  his  environment. 
We  fail  to  understand  how  the  Boards  of  Pharmacy  in  such 
cases  could  give  relief  nor  can  we  see  how  "the  Boards  of  Phar- 
macy could  make  a  ruling  which  would  either  enable  them  to  in- 
