Am  Jour.  Pharm.  \ 
March,  1906.  J 
Progress  in  Pharmacy. 
129 
PROGRESS  IN  PHARMACY. 
A  REVIEW  OF  SOME  OF  THE  MORE  INTERESTING  LITERATURE  RELATING 
TO  PHARMACY  AND  MATERIA  MEDICA. 
BY  M.  I.  WlXBERT, 
Apothecary  at  the  German  Hospital,  Philadelphia. 
In  this  country  the  interest  in  matters  pharmaceutic  appears  to  be 
about  evenly  divided  between  the  pending  warfare  on  nostrums  and 
fraudulent  proprietaries  and  current  criticisms  on  the  recently  issued 
revision  of  the  U.S. P. 
American  pharmacists,  and  particularly  the  editors  and  owners  of 
American  pharmaceutical  and  drug  journals,  have  not  taken  the 
prominent  part  in  the  present  efforts  to  eliminate  charlatanry  and 
fraud  from  the  practice  of  pharmacy  that  might,  very  properly,  have 
been  expected.  This  is  all  the  more  unfortunate  in  that  pharma- 
cists, as  a  class,  should,  above  all  others,  be  cognizant  of  the  very 
grave  possibilities  for  harm  that  are  embodied  in  the  several  nos- 
trums that  are  daily  advertised  and  sold  to  the  laity. 
If  the  pharmacist  of  to-day  has  any  possible  excuse  for  his  exist- 
ence it  is  in  this  that  he  is  supposed  to  be  capable  of  differentiating 
the  good  from  the  bad,  in  medicine,  and  is  thus  in  a  position  to  point 
out  to  his  customers,  or  to  physicians,  the  shortcomings  and  the 
faults  of  supposedly  new  remedies  or  popular  panaceas. 
If  then  the  pharmacist  fails  to  take  advantage  of  any  or  all  oppor- 
tunities that  are  offered  him  to  make  public  his  knowledge  regarding 
the  proper  status  of  these  several  preparations,  or,  even  worse,  if  he 
should  fail  to  properly  acquaint  himself  in  regard  to  the  truth  or  the 
falsity  of  the  various  claims  and  statements  that  are  made  regarding 
them,  he  is  distinctly  negligent  in  fulfilling  his  evident  duties  to 
himself  and  to  the  community  and  is  certainly  not  deserving  of  the 
confidence  and  the  patronage  for  which  he  is  making  a  bid. 
That  harmful  and  fraudulent  nostrums  are  being  advertised  and 
sold  is  admitted  by  all  who  have  given  the  matter  even  cursory 
attention.  It,  therefore,  appears  to  be  particularly  unfortunate  that 
even  a  limited  number  of  the  pharmaceutical  and  drug  journals  of  this 
country  have  been  so  remiss  in  appreciating  the  evident  necessity  of 
the  hour  as  to  not  alone  ignore  the  questions  really  at  issue,  but, 
even  worse,  to  condone  the  shortcomings  and  the  faults  of  some  of 
these  evidently  fraudulent  nostrums,  because  the  proprietors  or  their 
