Am.  Jour.  Pharm.\ 
March,  1905.  J* 
Progress  in  Pharmacy. 
133 
library,  is  used  as  a  waiting-room  for  the  street  railways  and  fur- 
nishes news,  gossip  and  general  information  to  all  that  apply.  If 
we  observe  closely,  we  will  find  that,  in  addition  to  all  of  these  com- 
modities, there  is,  in  an  obscure  and  out-of-the-way  portion  of  the 
store,  a  small  section  containing  the  drug  department,  where  pre- 
scriptions are  said  to  be  compounded."    (Phar.  Post,  1904,  page  714.) 
We  in  America  are,  however,  not  the  only  ones  that  are  slightly 
backward  in  our  scientific  development.  This  is  evidenced  by  a 
recent  article  on  "  Retrospect  and  Prospect  of  Pharmacy,"  by 
Mr.  David  Murray  {Phar.  Jour.,  1904,  page  864),  who  says:  "If 
pharmacy  is  yet  to  be  recognized  as  an  organized  profession,  or  if 
pharmacists  are  to  revive  the  respect  due  to  their  rights,  it  will  only 
be  acceded  to  when  pharmacists,  individually  and  collectively,  have 
proved  by  education  and  organization  that  they  merit  such  atten- 
tion." 
Another  writer  in  the  same  journal  {Phar.  Jour.,  1904,  page  848) 
says  :  "  After  everything  that  could  be  done  to  protect  trade  inter- 
ests during  recent  years  has  been  done,  pharmacists  are  still  faced 
with  the  difficulty  of  convincing  the  legislature  and  the  public  that 
they  have  a  just  claim  to  be  regarded  as  a  distinct  professional 
class." 
No  doubt  the  reasons  for  this  comparatively  unsatisfactory  condi- 
tion of  pharmacy  in  Great  Britain,  as  well  as  in  America,  is  to  be 
found  in  the  low  standards  of  pharmaceutical  education. 
A  synopsis  of  the  pharmaceutical  education  required  by  the 
several  European  governments,  which  was  republished  in  a  recent 
number  of  the  Pharmaceutical  Journal  (December  3,  1904),  is  par- 
ticularly interesting  in  this  connection.  From  this  synopsis  it 
appears  that,  with  the  single  exception  of  England,  the  large  Conti- 
nental countries  require  from  five  to  ten  years  of  special  study  for 
the  prospective  pharmacist.  All  of  the  Continental  countries,  in 
addition,  require  the  equivalent  to  matriculating  at  the  universities 
as  a  preliminary  requirement. 
The  Metric  System  of  Weights  and  Measures  in  Great  Britain. — The 
secretary  of  the  "  Decimal  Association,"  in  a  communication  to  the 
Pharmaceutical  Journal  (December  24,  1904,  page  951),  asserts  that 
prospects  are  very  favorable  that  the  metric  weights  and  measures 
bill  will  be  acted  on  favorably  by  the  House  of  Commons  at  an  early 
date. 
