THE 
AMERICAN  JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY. 
NOVEMBER,  1871. 
ON  THE  RELATIONS  OF  THE  SEVERAL  CLASSES  OF  DRUG- 
GISTS AND  PHARMACISTS  TO  THE  COLLEGES  OF  PHAR- 
MACY* 
By  Professor  E.  Parrish. 
The  tendency  to  a  division  of  labor  which  is  seen  in  the  growth  of 
every  branch  of  business,  has  developed  in  ours  a  variety  of  differ- 
ent occupations.  Fifty  years  ago,  when  this  college  was  established, 
almost  every  considerable  drug  store  had  something  like  a  labora- 
tory attached,  where  some  of  the  few  chemicals  then  in  use  and  all 
the  galenical  preparations  were  made,  and  where  nearly  all  the  crude 
drugs  were  assorted,  garbled  and  powdered. 
The  apprentice  enjoyed  a  wholesome  development  of  muscle  through 
wielding  the  ponderous  pestle,  handling  the  sieves  and  working  the 
screw  press.  He  learned  how  to  make  pills  by  wholesale,  to  prepare 
great  jars  of  extracts  and  cerates,  to  bottle  castor  oil,  Turlington's 
balsam  and  opodeldoc  by  the  gross,  and  what  he  lacked  in  the  num- 
ber and  variety  of  articles  he  dealt  in,  was  made  up  by  the  greater 
extent  of  his  operations  and  the  completeness  with  which,  in  a  single 
establishment,  all  the  then  known  processes  were  practiced.  Very 
many  physicians  then  dispensed  their  own  prescriptions,  drawing 
their  supplies  from  the  druggists,  but  gradually,  as  the  obvious  ad- 
vantages of  separating  dispensing  from  prescribing  began  to  be  rec- 
ognized, the  separate  prescription  counter  was  added  to  the  drug 
*  Extracted  from  the  Introductory  Lecture  to  the  50th  course  in  the  Phila- 
delphia College  of  Pharmacy.) 
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