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ENGLISH  AND  FRENCH  PHARMACY. 
Druggist.  Hint  to  this  worthy  individual  the  more  than  doubt- 
ful wrong  committed,  and  he  will  hasten  to  rescue  injured  inno- 
cence. He  will  show  you  the  great  usefulness  of  these  establish- 
ments in  remote  towns  and  villages,  in  desolate  neighborhoods 
and  poverty-stricken  hamlets ;  he  will  compare  them  to  light  in 
darkness,  to  a  well  in. the  wilderness,  an  oasis  in  the  desert;  he 
will  tell  you  with  a  triumphant  flourish,  how  they  step  in  where 
there  are  no  drugs  and  no  Pharmacien,  and  in  the  end,  will  draw 
such  a  glowing  picture,  that  you  might  become  sensibly  affected, 
did  you  not  recollect  that  the  orator  supplied  the  wholesale  order. 
In  Paris  no  religious  community  sells  its  physic,  charitable  in- 
stitutions buy  their  drugs  from  the  Pharmacien  at  ordinary  tariff 
prices,  and  no  man,  under  any  pretence  whatever,  can  there 
practise  Pharmacy  unless  he  has  obtained  a  diploma  of  the  first 
class.  Meanwhile  what  is  the  young  aspiring  Pharmacien  to 
do  ?  Should  he,  compelled  by  dire  necessity,  seek  to  establish 
himself  in  his  native  town,  he  must  meet  the  expenses  of  a  small 
business  in  painful  contrast  with  an  increasing  family;  must 
raise  the  money  for  his  rent,  taxes  and  patent  license,  and  at 
the  same  time  be  prepared  to  battle  with  a  huge  monopoly  which 
appeals  to  the  sympathy  of  both  worlds,  and  haunts  him  day 
and  night.  The  dreary  struggle  cannot  last  forever,  and  one 
fine  morning  there  is  a  druggist  less.    Up  go  the  shutters. 
A  second  point  of  difference  exists  with  regard  to  counter- 
practice  and  the  indiscriminate  sale  of  drugs.  How  often  do  we 
read  in  the  advertisements  of  this  Journal,  of  a  business  which 
is  recommended  as  "  doing  a  snug  retail  with  a  counter-practice." 
It  is  precisely  the  snug  retail  which  requires  this  aid  the  most, 
and  many  a  dismal-looking  shop,  with  its  dreary  bottles  and 
dusty  windows,  planted  in  a  dense  and  dirty  population,  is  turn- 
ing its  mixtures,  pills,  and  lotions  into  gold  by  the  alchemy  of 
counter-practice. 
There  are  establishments  in  London  where,  I  am  told,  there 
is  no  retail  trade  whatever,  which  are  nevertheless  held  in  much 
repute  by  the  parochial  Bank  ;  and  in  my  humble  opinion  a  good 
Pharmaceutist  is  better  than  a  bad  Surgeon. 
But  let  success  attend  the  business,  let  it  branch  out  and  set 
up  its  plate-glass  windows  in  the  West-end,  and  just  in  propor- 
tion as  the  snugness  vanishes,  the  counter-practice  dies.  The 
