470  The  1913  Meeting  of  Amer.  Phar.  Asso.  {  A^0°bUer,  S™' 
were  manifested  on  the  part  of  Nashville  druggists  and  their  friends. 
While  the  Nashville  meeting  will  not  be  recorded  as  record- 
breaking  so  far  as  attendance  is  concerned,  the  total  registration 
aggregrated  397  and  practically  all  sections  of  the  country  were 
represented.  Despite  the  unusually  hot  weather  which  prevailed 
during  the  week,  the  attendance  at  the  several  sessions  of  the  As- 
sociation and  of  the  different  sections  was  unusually  good.  The 
meeting  rooms  were  large  and  roomy  and  everything  that  the 
members  of  the  local  committee  could  do  to  make  the  stay  of 
members  of  the  A.  Ph.  A.  comfortable  and  pleasant  was  done. 
The  opening  sessions  of  the  Associations  and  many  of  the  sub- 
sequent meetings  of  the  several  sections  were  held  in  the  rooms  of 
the  Masonic  Grand  Lodge  building,  within  a  few  minutes  walk  of 
the  Hotel  Hermitage,  the  official  headquarters.  The  sessions  of 
the  Council,  meetings  of  special  committees  and  some  of  the  sec- 
tion-sessions were  held  in  the  hotel  itself. 
The  first  session  of  the  Association  was  formally  opened  by 
President  W.  B.  Day,  on  the  afternoon  of  August  18th.  In  the 
absence  of  the  Governor  of  Tennessee,  his  Secretary,  Robert  S. 
Henry,  welcomed  the  members  and  delegates  to  Nashville.  R.  W. 
Vickers,  of  Murfreesboro,  Tennessee,  extended  a  welcome  on  be- 
half of  the  pharmacists  of  that  State  and  these  several  addresses 
were  replied  to  by  Joseph  P.  Remington  in  his  usual  happy  vein. 
The  address  of  the  President  contained  a  number  of  recom- 
mendations of  policy  and  discussed  at  some  length  the  relations  of 
pharmacy  to  the  manufacture  and  use  of  nostrums  and  the  abuse 
of  habit-forming  drugs.  In  commenting  on  the  attitude  of  phar- 
macists toward  the  so-called  "  patent  "  medicines,  he  said  in  part : 
"  These  proprietaries  are  secret  in  composition  and  secrecy  in 
formula  is  frequently  acompanied  by  extravagant  exploitation.  In 
some  cases  the  patient  is  injured  by  the  formation  of  drug  habits, 
in  others  by  the  excessive  or  ill-advised  use  of  potent  drugs,  while 
if  no  other  ill  effects  are  experienced,  there  is  often  a  waste  of 
valuable  time  devoted  to  '  trying  out '  a  much  vaunted  cure,  dur- 
ing which  the  opportunity  for  successfully  combating  the  disease 
is  lost.  ...  At  best  the  pharmacist  has  no  opportunity  to  show 
his  skill  but  merely  hands  out  a  package  of  ready  made  medicine 
of  whose  composition  he  knows  little  or  nothing  and  perhaps  as- 
sumes the  responsibility  for  recommending  it  in  the  treatment  of 
disease  of  whose  nature  he  is  equally  ignorant. 
