AMjui°yUi,'iP874RM  }      Future  of  Pharmacy  in  Germany.  325 
these  attainments,  as  a  rule,  do  not  bring  fruit,  for  the  reason  that 
pharmaceutical  practice  has  ceased  to  afford  any  longer  the  former 
•compass  and  opportunity  of  application,  nor  a  sufficient  impetus  to 
practically  cultivate  the  acquired  proficiency. 
*  ■  Moreover,  the  advanced  state  of  rational  medicine  has  discontinued 
the  use  of  many  remedial  agents,  and  has  greatly  limited  not  only 
the  list  of  materia  medica,  but  also  the  former  liberal  administration 
of  medicines  ;  the  consequence  of  this  restriction  is  a  decrease  of  the 
legitimate  business  and  income  of  the  pharmaceutist ;  being  formerly 
a  remunerative  pursuit,  it  hardly  furnishes,  any  longer,  a  respectable 
living  to  a  great  many  highly-educated  men,  and  we  see,  therefore, 
the  pharmacist  enter  more  and  more  upon  mercantile  resources  for 
subsistence,  with  the  aim  to  gain,  on  the  other  hand,  as  a  dealer,  what 
the  professional  scope  of  his  business  falls  short  to  supply ;  he  en- 
riches his  stock  with  homoeopathic  and  with  patent  medicines,  and 
enters  into  competition  with  the  dealer  in  fancy  articles,  with  the 
perfumer,  the  confectioner,  etc. 
"  The  business  of  the  pharmacist  depends  for  the  future  largely  upon 
the  drift  of  the  manufacturing  business,  which,  when  it  should  also 
extend  its  aim  and  scope  to  the  production  of  the  medicinal  sub- 
stances in  ready-dosed  and  elegantly-prepared  forms,  will  deprive 
the  pharmacist,  more  or  less,  from  the  last  remnant  of  his  proficiency. 
This  inroad  has  already  commenced,  and  bids  fair  way  to  an  increas- 
ing extent  and  to  success ;  it  tends  to  relieve  the  physician  from  the 
necessity  of  prescribing  so  many  grains  of  Dover's  powder,  of  quinia, 
of  calomel,  etc.,  to  be  rubbed  up  with  sugar  and  divided  into  so  many 
doses  ;  he  will  merely  have  to  direct,  his  patient  to  buy  a  number  of 
dosed  capsules  or  tablets.  He  will  soon  find  all  the  chief  formulae  of 
his  dispensatory  provided  in  elegant  forms  and  envelopes,  disguising 
smell  and  taste,  and  both  the  physician  and  the  patient  will  gladly  dis- 
pense with  the  old,  repulsive  forms  of  mixtures, decoctions,  powders,  etc. 
The  great  number  of  vegetable  drugs  of  uncertain  value  and  variable 
quality,  will  be  discarded,  and  will  be  replaced  by  the  active  princi- 
ples, obtained  from  them  in  a  pure  and  stable  form,  so  that  the  materia 
medica  of  the  rational  physician  will  henceforth  be  like  that  of  the 
homoeopathist,  ready  prepared  and  dosed,  and  all  emanating  from  the 
manufacturing  establishment. 
"When  system  and  method  will  extend  and  consummate  this  mode 
of  administration  of  the  remedial  agents,  nothing  will  be  left  of  the 
