16  Pharmacists,  Physicians  and  Nostrums.  {^'jSH'HSf^ 
valuable  life  they  may  save,  by  their  intelligent  and  conscientious  action, 
and  by  wise  counsel  in  impressing  upon  the  minds  of  their  customers  or 
the  afflicted  the  advantage  or  necessity  of  abstaining  from  experiments, 
at  least  with  domestic  remedies,  sugar  pellets  or  nostrums,  and  of  resorting 
in  time  to  medical  aid. 
The  truth  is  that,  in  this  respect,  no  complaint  on  the  part  of  the 
community  against  the  Dharmacists  appears  to  be  on  record  ;  and  it 
may  safely  be  said  that  American  pharmacy,  notwithstanding  its  many 
wants,  especially  in  regard  to  the  general  culture  in  the  individual, 
which  it  has  in  common  with  the  other  professions,  evidently  enjoys, 
at  present,  to  a  large  extent,  the  public  confidence,  and  meets  all  rea- 
sonable expectations  to  general  satisfaction.  Whenever  there  has  been 
any  just  demand,  the  profession  has  shown  the  spirit  and  energy  to 
redress  and  improve  any  shortcoming,  while  in  its  schools  it  has  con- 
tinually been  raising  the  standard  of  education  and  qualification, 
although  they,  perhaps,  may  have,  in  time,  to  face  the  same  danger  which 
so  deplorably  has  lowered  the  status  of  qualification  in  so  large  a  por- 
tion of  American  physicians,  arising  from  the  excessive  and  reckless 
multiplication  of  rival  schools,  many  of  which  are  said  to  confer  the 
degree  of  M.  D.  indiscriminately  "on  the  veriest  boor,  almost  without 
expense,  and  upon  an  examination  which  is  little  or  nothing  more  than 
a  farce,"  and  in  this  way  "  annually  to  let  loose  upon  the  community  a 
multitude  of  doctors  who  are  totally  unfit  for  the  momentous  duties 
with  which  they,  by  such  a  diploma,  are  legally  entrusted."* 
Under  such  circumstances,  where  the  fundamental  requisites  for 
confidence  and  reliance  in  the  physician  are  so  much  and  so  widely 
wanting,  in  a  great  number  even  of  regular  practitioners  throughout  the 
land,  and  where  evils  are  so  openly  known  to  exist  and  call  for  reform, 
evils  which  are  of  no  small  magnitude  to  the  profession,  but  of  infi- 
nitelv  greater  consequence  to  the  community,  the  advancing  of  impu- 
tations, like  the  above-mentioned  one,  on  the  part  of  medical  journals, 
is  at  least  untimely  and  impolitic,  as  it  is  also  uncalled  for,  and  recalls 
forcibly  the  application  of  the  old  adage  :  "  Those  who  live  in  glass 
houses  should  not  throw  stones." 
3.  uWe  might  suggest  the  propriety  of  sending  our  prescriptions  to  such 
pharmacists  as  do  not  vend  patent  medicines"    Although  none  more  than 
*Dr.  H.  C.  Wood,  Jr.,  in  "  Lippincott's  Magazine,"  December,  1875,  pp.  707 
708  and  709. 
