Am'jiiy,r'i9ih9.rm'  }  Secret— Private— Personal  42 1 
Turn  thought  now  to  man,  whose  complicated  accomplishments 
are  cosmopolitan  in  the  extreme.  Restrict  it  to  those  concerned  in 
the  various  sections  of  pharmacy.  Should  they  be  denied  the  right 
of  personality?  Instead,  is  not  the  field  of  him  involved  therein  so 
great,  in  its  recesses  of  observation,  as  well  as  research  opportu- 
nities, that .  all-important  to  the  world  at  large  is  personality?  Is 
there  not  room  for  each  individual  to  stand  distinct  as  contrasted 
with  others  in  his  vocation  ?  Does  not  the  very  acme  of  pharmacy's 
opportunity  and  service  to  humanity,  as  a  whole,  depend  on  the 
quality  distinctions  of  her  votaries? 
Back,  five  decades  and  over,  turns  the  thought  of  this  writer,  to 
where,  in  the  commencement  of  his  studies,  behind  the  prescription 
counter,  fifteen  years  successively,  he  stood  a  "  druggist's  clerk, " 
aiming  to  qualify  himself,  as  far  as  possible,  in  the  art  of  pharmacy. 
To  have  suppressed  the  personal  ego  so  earnestly  encouraged  by  his 
preceptors,  would  surely  have  been  to  blast  life's  opportunity.  And 
yet,  it  is  plainly  apparent  that  artificial,  medico-pharmaceutical 
ethics  of  that  period,  indiscriminately  illogical,  were  persistently 
endeavoring  to  suppress  the  individuality  of  pharmacists  who,  by 
studious  effort  leading  to  personal  business  opportunity,  were  seek- 
ing future  professional  recognition. 
Who  of  that  period  cannot  recall  the  "  codists' "  blanket  efforts 
to  prevent  physicians  from  a  right  to  direct  a  patient  to  a  pharmacist 
possessing  exceptional  qualifications,  in  perhaps  one  phase  of  the 
art  needed  in  a  special  compound?  Who  of  those  times  cannot  re- 
call, not  by  innuendoes  alone,  but  by  open  charges  that  royalties 
were  paid  physicians  by  the  pharmacists  who,  by  earned  distinction, 
had  the  right  to  professional  favors?  Who  of  that  period  cannot 
bring  to  mind  reflections  cast  on  both  the  physician  and  the  pharma- 
cist, when  a  physician  directed  that  a  prescription  be  taken  to  a  cer- 
tain pharmacist  whom  the  physician  knew  to  have  become  qualified 
in  some  phase  of  the  art,  by  experience  as  well  as  by  special 
research  ?2 
May  we  not  individualize  by  citing  a  few  examples  from  times 
gone  by? 
2  That  royalties  were  paid  by  some  pharmacists  to  some  physicians  is 
not  denied  by  this  writer,  who  asserts,  however,  that  such  processes  were 
never  practiced  by  men  classing  with  his  preceptors  or  physicians  favoring 
them  with  distinctive  patronage. 
