272 
Pharmacy  Laws  in  the  U.  8. 
(  Am.  Jour.  Phakm. 
t    June  1.  1874. 
sity,  do  it  in  accordance  with  its  Constitution;  and,  if  this  is  impos- 
sible, then  that  Constitution  must  be  amended.  It  cannot  do  it  by 
circumventing  these  principles,  for  such  attempts  are  known  by  their 
fruits,  of  which  we  have  a  sample  in  our  registration  acts — this  lame 
imitation,  in  our  free  country,  of  a  still  lamer  English  precedent, — a 
lame  imitation,  because  in  England  they  examine  and  register  phar- 
macists, and  prosecute  them  for  accidents  to  the  last  degree,  on  one 
hand,  and  on  the  other  they  allow  a  dealer  in  groceries  to  huckster 
all  medicines,  drugs  nnd  poisons  most  generally  in  use. 
Pharmacy  is  a  profession  in  France  and  Germany  ;  its  practice  is 
the  concern  of  the  Government  of  those  States,  and  is  regulated  ac- 
cording to  its  orders.  The  movement  which  has  been  going  on  during 
the  last  few  years  in  Germany  towards  the  "  Freigebung  des  Apothe- 
kergewerbes"  is  generally  misconstrued  in  this  country  ;  for  it  is  no 
evidence  at  all  of  a  tendency  in  the  direction  of  that  English  prece- 
dent or  our  imitation  of  it.  That  movement  has  about  as  much  in- 
fluence on  the  existing  order  of  the  profession  of  pharmacy  in  Ger- 
many as  our  registration  act  on  the  existing  order  of  huckstering 
drugs  in  this  country  ;  for  it  requires  a  "  Beschluss"  or  an  act  of  the 
"Reichstag"  of  the  German  Empire  before  those  "  Gewerbefreiheit'7 
shriekers  can  reduce  the  profession  of  German  pharmacy  to  a  "  Ge- 
werbe,"  that  is  a  trade.  The  German  Empire  is  a  constitutional  mon- 
archy; and  it  requires  an  act  of  Congress  in  our  constitutional  repub- 
lic to  elevate  that  trade  to  the  rank  of  a  profession.  If  they  should 
accomplish  it,  however,  then  it  is  true  that  pharmaceutical  supervi- 
sion by  the  State  will  hardly  mean  anything  else  but  to  insure  the 
thorough  qualification  of  the  pharmacist  and  his  personal  responsi- 
bility, but  it  will  then  also  be  true  that  a  trade  is  no  profession,  and 
that  when  the  dealer  in  groceries  of  Germany,  the  manufacturer  of 
quack  nostrums  et  id  genus  omne,  stand  on  the  same  footing  in  all 
material  points,  then  Continental  Europe  will  form  a  striking  exam- 
ple of  English  and  American  free  trade. 
The  Governmental  machinery  of  those  States  is  slow,  but  solid  and 
compact ;  nor  can  this  be  otherwise,  because  forty  millions  of  people 
are  living  on  an  area  not  much  larger  than  the  State  of  Texas.  It 
is  not  likely  that  German  pharmacy  will  be  reformed  so  as  practi- 
cally to  be  a  free  trade. 
We  here  are  and  have  been  agitating  to  raise  the  free  business  of 
selling  drugs  to  the  rank  of  a  profession,  but  the  Constitution  secures 
