Am'jJanUr'i8P76arm'}  Pharmacists,  Physicians  and  Nostrums.  17 
pharmacists  would  hail  the  day  when,  in  consequence  of  the  restored 
universal  trust  in  the  physician,  doctors*  prescriptions  and  the  exclusive 
demand  for  legitimate  medicines  would  take  the  place  of  every  sale  of 
a  nostrum,  and  the  latter  pass  into  oblivion,  yet  they  cannot  admit  the 
logic  as  construed  and  applied  in  the  above  assertion,  cited  from  an 
editorial  in  the  New  York  "  Medical  Record  :"*  they  share  with  the 
majority  of  well-informed  and  accomplished  physicians  and  the  intelli- 
gent part  of  the  community  in  the  opinion  that  the  time  has  passed  by, 
when  reliable  and  competent  pharmacists  were  at  a  premium,  and  that 
at  present  the  large  body  of  educated  pharmacists  to  be  found  through- 
out the  country,  no  matter  if  they  sell  nostrums  or  not,  are  both 
qualified  and  trustworthy  in  their  business,  however  it  may  be  desig- 
nated by  some  doctors  "as  a  profession  or  a  trade. "f  If  physicians 
cannot  make  this  discrimination,  the  public  can,  and  will  more  and 
more  act  on  their  own  judgment  in  the  choice  of  a  pharmacist,  just  as 
in  that  of  a  doctor.  People  of  culture  cannot  but  feel  it  an  impropri- 
ety in  a  physician,  unless  in  exceptional  cases,  to  direct  or  dictate  to  a 
patient  where  to  go  in  order  to  get  his  prescription  compounded,  and 
such  insinuation  would  reveal  a  want  either  of  tact  or  of  good  sense 
in  the  physician,  and  would  possibly  suggest  the  traditional  suspicion  of 
a  special  interest  of  the  latter  in  the  profits  which  he  confers  upon  a 
pharmacist.  % 
In  leaving  this  unpleasant  subject,  which  it  is  unwarrantable  for 
medical  writers  to  advance  as  a  menace, §  and  in  relation  to  an  attempt  on 
the  part  of  pharmacists  as  to  the  best  and  most  efficient  methods  in 
dealing  with  the  nostrum  traffic,  it  is  proper  to  state,  as  expressing  the 
sentiment  of  the  pharmaceutical  profession  and  to  a  large  extent  that 
of  the  intelligent  public  too,  that  pharmacists  are  fully  justified  in 
sharply  repelling  any  such  unbecoming  insinuation,  from  whatever  side 
it  may  come,  whether  by  caprice  or  by  want  of  respect,  or  under  the 
obsolete  notion  that  physicians  have  the  prerogative  of  exercising  a 
tutelage  over  the  practice  of  pharmacy,  a  profession  which,  in  the 
United  States,  too,  has  reached  its  majority,  and  become  competent  to 
take  care  of  its  own  affairs  and  to  stand  on  its  own  merits. 
When  we  balance  the  present  status  of  medicine  and  pharmacy  in 
*  October,  1875,  P-  729- 
f  New  York  "  Medical  Record,"  October,  1875,  P-  682- 
%  "American  Journal  of  Pharmacy,"  September,  1874,  p.  444. 
I  New  York  "  Medical  Record,"  October,  1875,  P-  729* 
2 
