THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY. 
SEPTEMBER,  1885. 
SODIO-BISMUTH  TARTRATE  K^D  PEPSIN. 
By  R.  Rother. 
That  the  profession  of  pharmacy  is  the  natural  custodian  of  the 
Pharmacopoeia  admits  of  no  doubt.  It  does  infinite  credit  to  the 
medical  profession  to  recognize  and  concede  this  fact.  Now,  whilst 
medicine  has  gracefully  yielded  full  scope  to  the  proper  function  of 
pharmacy,  it  cannot  be  said  that  pharmacy  has  been  equally  consid- 
erate to  accept  its  rightful  limits.  Hence,  as  the  imperfections  of  the 
system  of  medicine,  pertaining  to  its  agencies,  are  grievous  obstacles 
to  its  own  progress,  it  comes  with  rather  ill  grace  from  the  system  of 
pharmacy  to  prescribe  its  methods,  or  even  to  absorb  its  functions. 
When  the  imperfections  and  irregularities  of  any  system  are  very 
great,  and  out  of  all  correspondence  with  the  surrounding  conditions, 
the  time  of  its  certain  extinction  is  not  remote.  When,  however,  a 
system  evinces  considerable  persistence,  and  shows  some  indications  of 
general  improvement,  the  probabilities  are  that  the  correspondences 
are  numerous,  and  that  the  ill  adapted  and  unadaptive  features  will 
eventually  disappear. 
A  system  of  the  first  kind  will  be  displaced  in  its  totality  by  better 
systems.  A  system  of  the  second  kind  will  maintain  itself  by  retain- 
ing its  perfect  parts  and  displacing  all  others  by  more  correspondent 
portions.  These  various  changes  are  necessarily  slow,  which  to  many 
seems  insufferable. 
The  transition  from  the  less  to  the  more  ethical  presents  all  degrees 
of  their  mixture,  and  hence  there  is  no  time  or  place  where  the  wholly 
unethical  ends  and  the  wholly  ethical  begins.  This  is  a  general  prin- 
ciple, and  holds  universally,  be  it  in  a  system,  organism  or  individual. 
In  the  two  systems  of  medicine  and  pharmacy  there  is  much  of  a 
certain  irregularity  termed  quackery ;  but,  where  there  is  a  relatively 
large  amount  of  crudity,  even  coexistent  with  a  forward  tendency,  as 
in  these  two  cases,  it  is  very  difficult  to  find  many  individuals  suffi- 
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