AmjJa°riiri876harm'}   Pharmacists,  Physicians  and  Nostrums.  I  5 
diminish  confidence  in  the  unexceptional  qualification  of  the  medical  proT 
fession  at  large,  and  tend  to  drive  the  public  to  other  means  of  relief,  and 
among  them,  especially,to  nostrums. 
2.  The  charge  upon  pharmacists  of  the  alleged  practice  of  prescrib- 
ing, or  advising  and  dispensing  medicines  on  their  own  account  and 
responsibility,  when  called  upon  to  do  so,  is  one  which  medical  men 
occasionally  like  to  indulge  in,  and  in  which  they  draw  largely  on 
their  own  imagination,  and  put  all  the  real  or*  fancied  facts  deliberately 
to  one  side.  The  fact  is,  that  the  choice  of  the  methods  or  agents  to 
be  employed  in  the  maintenance  or  restoration  of  health,  and  the 
inquiry  for,  as  well  as  the  imparting  of  advice  as  to  remedies  and  their 
application  or  use,  as  well  as  the  sale  of  unobjectionable  commercial 
drugs  and  medicines,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  whose  sale  is 
restricted  for  their  poisonous  character,  by  State  or  local  laws,  and 
the  compounding  of  physicians'  prescriptions,  is  entirely  optional  to 
every  individual  in  this  land,  as  well  as,  more  or  less  so,  elsewhere. 
This  principle,  right  or  wrong,  has  lately  asserted  its  validity  in  regard 
to  the  practice  of  medicine,  even  in  Germany,*  notwithstanding  its 
rigid  statutes  and  thoroughly  educated  body  of  physicians  it,  unfortu- 
nately, leaves  a  wide  and  precarious  range  to  license,  which,  however, 
under  the  present  constitutional  privileges  of  every  individual,  evidently 
cannot  effectually  be  met  otherwise  than  by  the  jurisdiction  of  the  penal 
code  in  the  courts,  as  the  ultimate  safeguard  and  recourse  in  cases  of 
injury  by  malpractice.  Beyond  this  alternative  and  the  fundamental  exi- 
gency in  this  country,  to  raise  and  establish  by  statutes,  and  subsequently 
to  maintain,  the  standard  of  education  and  qualification  in  the  professions, 
no  other  tribunal  can  be  had  for  the  present,  unless  that  moral  one 
which  culminates  in  a  proper  and  sound  sense  of  responsibility,  char- 
acter and  honor  in  the  individual,  and  which  pharmacists,  not  less  than 
the  physicians,  individually  as  well  as  a  class,  should  possess  and  deserve 
par  excellence. 
Far  from  sanctioning  or  countenancing  imposition  or  licence  by 
unqualified  or  unprincipled  persons,  inside  or  outside  the  professions, 
although  they,  to  a  very  large  extent,  are  admitted  by.  the  laws  and 
customs  of  the  land,  it  may,  in  regard  to  pharmacists,  be  but  proper  to 
take  into  consideration,  on  the  other  hand,  how  much  good  they  do, 
in  the  way  of  preventing  misapplication  or  omission,  and  how  many  a 
*  "American  Journal  of  Pharmacy,"  July,  1874,  p.  321. 
