Am.  Jour.  Pharm  \ 
Jan.,  1891.  j 
Editorial. 
5i 
Mr.  Bllis  asked  if  the  reputation  of  the  pharmacist  of  to-day  was  equal  to  that 
of  the  pharmacist  of  forty  years  ago. 
Mr.  Mclntyre  said  he  was  not  in  business  forty  years  ago,  but  that  the 
pharmacist  of  the  present  time  was  ready  for  any  business  that  offered  ;  that  to 
carry  on  the  business  successfully  required  about  three  times  as  much  work 
now  as  it  did  ten  years  ago,  a  much  greater  investment  of  capital  and  greater 
expense  in  the  matter  of  help  about  the  store.  In  his  opinion  it  was  proper 
that  all  the  preparations  of  the  Pharmacopoeia  should  be  made  in  his  store. 
The  query  was  raised  what  is  the  proper  article  to  dispense  when  fluid  extract 
of  witch  hazel  is  prescribed  ;  that  of  the  leaf  or  bark  ?  It  was  claimed  that  as 
the  extract  of  the  leaves  is  officinal  it  should  be  dispensed  unless  otherwise 
ordered. 
Mr.  Thompson  said  that  40  or  50  years  ago  there  were  comparatively  few 
scientific  pharmacists  and  relatively  a  large  community  who  would  naturally 
look  to  them  and  obtain  their  medicines  from  them  ;  and  that  now  the  greater 
number  of  educated  pharmacists  rendered  the  individual  less  prominent.  By 
making  and  dispensing  his  own  pharmaceutical  preparations,  every  pharmacist 
would  secure  the  confidence  of  the  physician  and  of  the  public. 
Mr.  Beringer  recommended  that  new  drugs  or  preparations  introduced  for 
medical  use  be  brought  forward  as  subjects  for  discussion  at  these  meetings. 
Mr.  Thompson  referred  to  the  recent  action  of  the  American  Medical  Asso- 
ciation in  establishing  a  section  of  materia  medica  and  pharmacy  to  which 
pharmacists  will  be  admitted,  and  said  that  if  this  action  was  met  in  a  proper 
spirit,  keeping  steadily  in  view  the  advantages  which  would  accrue  from  a 
harmony  of  action  to  both  professions,  instead  of  thrusting  every  grievance, 
real  or  fancied,  upon  the  attention  of  the  section,  then  a  great  deal  of  good 
would  be  accomplished  and  much  closer  and  fairer  relations  between  the  two 
professions  would  be  effected. 
There  being  no  further  business,  a  motion  to  adjourn  was  put  and  carried. 
T.  S.  WIEGAND, 
Registrar. 
EDITORIAL. 
The  Philadelphia  College  of  Pharmacy  has  been  lighted  by  electricity  since 
the  middle  of  December.  Measures  had  been  taken  by  the  Board  of  Trustees 
to  have  this  improvement  in  use  at  the  beginning  of  the  session,  but  the  delay 
occurred  through  the  inability  of  the  electric  company  of  furnishing  the  neces- 
sary current  at  an  earlier  day.  Each  of  the  lecture  rooms  is  now  supplied  with 
thirty  Edison  incandescent  lamps,  and  a  sufficient  number  of  them  have  been 
placed  in  the  different  rooms,  offices,  hall-ways,  the  museum,  etc.  To  mark 
this  event  a  social  gathering  of  the  members  of  the  College  and  their  ladies 
was  arranged  for  the  evening  of  January  2,  under  the  direction  of  a  Committee 
consisting  of  Howard  B.  French,  Professor  Remington  and  Dr.  A.  W.  Miller. 
Nearly  two  hundred  persons  assembled  in  the  Pharmacy  lecture  room  to  listen 
to  an  informal  talk — as  it  was  called — on  electricity  by  Professor  E.  J.  Houston, 
of  the  Central  High  School,  who  gave  a  brief  but  very  interesting  resume  of 
the  history  of  electricity  as  a  science,  and  of  the  progress  made  in  its  varied 
applications,  dwelling  also  upon  some  of  the  problems  awaiting  solution  to  still 
