%iyM874RM'}     The  Practice  of  Pharmacy  in  the  U.  S.  213 
for  the  paper  on  which  it  is  printed,  know  nothing  definite  about  it, 
may  or  may  not  keep  on  hand  whatever  they  please,  and  may  or 
may  not  graduate  the  quality  and  strength  of  their  drugs  and 
preparations  so  as  to  stand  in  a  suitable  relation  to  the  strength  of 
their  pockets  ;  everything  is  left  to  the  progressive  ideas  of  the  indi- 
vidual, and  nobody  can  compel  him  to  care  at  all  about  it.  Pharmacy 
might  be  made  more  remunerative,  and  at  the  same  time  considerably 
elevated  in  the  estimation  of  the  people,  by  a  close  working  union  or 
national  organization  of  the  druggists  of  the  United  States  of  America, 
by  such  means  for  instance,  as  the  establishment  of  a  uniform  tariff 
of  prices  in  the  prescription  as  well  as  retail  trade,  agreed  to  and 
conformed  to  by  every  member,  said  tariff  to  be  altered  monthly  in 
accordance  with  the  state  of  the  market ;  but  such  an  association  de- 
pending on  individual  consent,  is  almost  Utopian,  because  it  requires 
a  certain  degree  of  honesty,  foreign  to  the  spirit  of  unscrupulous 
competition  possessed  by  the  majority,  which  does  not  care  to  bind 
itself  by  rules,  even  if  we  succeed  to  convince  it,  by  figuring  them  out 
in  dollars  and  cents. 
We  are,  therefore,  no  nearer  to  pharmacy  than  we  were  forty 
years  ago,  and  the  question  will  recur  again  and  again  :  What  are  we 
going  to  do  about  it  ? 
Chicago,  April,  1874. 
SOLUTION  OF  THE  CITRATE  OF  MAGNESIUM. 
By  Charles  G.  Polk,  M.  D. 
I  find  in  the  Report  of  the  Committee  of  the  American  Pharma- 
ceutical Association  a  very  pointed  criticism,  by  Mr.  Diehl,  of  Louis- 
ville, on  a  formula  (published  by  me  a  short  time  before  the  publica- 
tion of  the  last  edition  of  the  Pharmacopoeia)  in  the  Druggists  Circu- 
lar, for  a  cheap  citrate  of  magnesium.  At  the  time  of  publication, 
the  extremely  high  price  of  citric  acid  and  the  competition  of  trade, 
had  really  created  a  demand  for  a  formula  for  an  article  that  would 
answer  the  purpose,  and  yet  be  within  the  price  the  large  mass  of 
people  could  afford  to  pay.  To  meet  that  demand,  the  objectionable 
article  was  furnished. 
The  practical  point  at  issue  is  whether  one  hundred  and  twenty 
grains  of  carbonate  of  magnesium,  decomposed  by  two  hundred  and 
forty  grains  of  citric  acid,  is  sufficiently  active  to  meet  the  wishes  of 
those  who  take  the  citrate  of  magnesium. 
