2IO 
Standardised  Preparations. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharrn . 
May,  1890. 
work  advantage  to  others  and  disadvantage  to  themselves ;  by  tak- 
ing the  manufacture  of  such  preparations  out  of  the  manufacturers' 
hands,  or  by  deliberately  refusing  to  do  so?  If  there  were  anything 
in  the  past  history  of  retail  pharmacy  which  indicated  a  power  on 
their  part  to  determine  the  character  of  the  medicines  which  physi- 
*  cians  will  use,  then  we  might  see  some  hope  of  their  determining 
the  action  of  the  profession  in  the  present  instance.  But  who  can 
deny  that,  willing  or  not  willing,  they  must  follow  the  direction  of 
the  medical  profession.  To  me  it  seems  that  the  gravest  possible 
kind  of  a  mistake  will  be  made  by  the  pharmaceutical  profession  if 
it  shall  pronounce  a  verdict  not  only  contradictory  to  its  high  and 
just  pretensions  as  a  scientific  body,  but  utterly  useless  for  any  other 
purpose  than  to  cut  its  members  off  from  participation  in  the  bene- 
fits, professional  and  commercial,  of  a  condition  whose  arrival  cannot 
be  stayed.  How  much  better  is  it,  accepting  the  inevitable,  to  take 
an  honorable  part  in  its  promotion,  and  at  the  same  time  to  so  influ- 
ence the  movement  as  to  make  it  tend,  so  far  as  possible,  to  their 
own  best  interests.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  retail  pharmacist  ought 
to  be  the  sole  pecuniary  gainer  by  the  introduction  of  standardized 
medicines,  and  so  he  can  be  if  he  only  will.  Neither  is  there  any 
doubt  in  my  mind  that  there  has  been  a  general  perversion  of  senti- 
ment in  favor  of  the  very  course  that  is  most  opposed  to  his  inter- 
ests, and  against  that  which  is  calculated  to  most  greatly  benefit 
him.  The  committee  on  revision  will  surely  be  competent  to  decide 
how  far  the  application  of  the  principle  is  practicable. 
Apparently  there  is  at  the  present  day  little  doubt  that  the 
weight  of  influence,  in  pharmacy  as  well  as  in  medicine,  lies  in  the 
direction  of  adding  to  the  list  of  standardized  drugs.  It  would 
appear  that  there  is  no  doubt  that  this  action  will  be  taken  by  the 
Convention.  But  it  is  not  so  certain  that  pharmacists  will  favor  the 
extension  of  standardization  to  any  oi  the  preparations.  Here 
again  much  will  depend  upon  the  attitude  of  the  medical  profes- 
sion. It  is  doubtful  if  they  will  be  satisfied  with  the  standardization 
of  an  article  which  they  do  not  use,  and  the  exclusion  of  the  same 
principle  from  the  preparation  of  it  which  they  do  use.  If  the 
standardization  of  the  drug  itself  is  a  sufficient  guarantee  of  uni- 
formity in  the  preparations  made  therefrom  to  constitute  practically 
the  application  of  that  principle  to  the  preparations,  then  the 
formal  standardization  of  such  preparations  is  but  a  form,  and  the 
