EDITORIAL.  571 
tion  should  increase  in  proportion  as  the  class  of  article  makes  greater  demand 
on  the  knowledge  obtained  by  his  professional  education.  If  he  sells  articles 
dealt  in  by  other  classes  of  tradesmen,  he  must  submit  to  the  same  rate  of 
profit.  In  drugs  proper,  which  require  an  educated  judgment,  power  of  test- 
ing and  the  like,  he  is  entitled  to  a  much  higher  rate ;  whilst  in  all  matters  of 
dispensing,  his  charges  should  be  professional  in  their  character,  and  not  cal- 
culated on  the  cost  of  employed  materials  at  all.  We  cannot  materially  in- 
crease the  quantity  of  medicines  sold  by  reducing  the  price  ;  hence  any  of  us 
endeavoring  by  low  charges  to  increase  his  business  must  recollect  that  he 
does  it  to  tbe  direct  injury  of  the  body,  in  reducing  by  so  much  the  amount 
of  money  that  might  accrue  from  its  legitimate  practice.  In  large  towns  the 
responsibility  of  prices  charged  rests  with  one  or  two  leading  men,  and  if  they 
are  true  to  their  professional  instincts,  the  calling  can  scarcely  fail  to  prosper." 
I  agree  with  the  above,  and  I  may  add  that  the  pharmaceutist  saves  himself 
an  immensity  of  trouble,  and  will  most  probably  prolong  his  days,  if  he  will 
once  have  the  courage  to  adopt  one  uniform  fixed  price,  else  he  is  subjected  to 
continual  petty  annoyance.  Having  determined  to  be  the  master  of  his  own 
business,  he  will  be  content  to  abide  by  his  own  regulations,  and  not,  on  the 
one  hand,  place  himself  at  the  mercy  of  the  competing  pharmaceutist  who 
trims  his  sail  to  every  wind  that  blows,  or,  on  the  other,  to  the  caprice  of  tbe 
customer,  who  not  always  truthfully  asserts  that  he  has  obtained  articles  of 
definite  commercial  value  at  a  starvation  price. 
Not  only  his  regard  to  self-respect,  but  to  his  trade  interest,  will  be  his 
guide  to  a  third  ethical  observance,  viz.,  to  supply  the  public  with  the  precise 
ai  tides  for  which  they  ask.  This  point  strikes  me  not  so  much  as  a  question 
in  ethics  as  in  a  purely  business  light;  but  I  have  been  requested  to  bring  it 
forward,  and  I  am  bound  to  do  so. 
The  rule  of  every  well-regulated  establishment  is  to  supply  faithfully  and 
implicitly  whatever  in  the  whole  range  of  pharmacy  a  customer  may  require — 
to  obtain  it  if  not  in  stock,  whether  English  or  foreign,  and  to  spare  no  pains 
that  it  shall  be  the  identical  thing  desired. 
To  do  otherwise  seems  to  me  not  to  warrant  so  fine  a  phrase  as  a  trade 
error,  but  a  pure  shop  mistake.  Does  the  customer  want  liquor  bismuthi, 
Schacht,  he  is  supplied  from  Clifton;  does  he  send  for  Brown's  chlorodyne,  he 
receives  that  made  by  Mr.  Davenport;  if  quinine  be  ordered,  salicine  must  not 
be  substituted;  and  so  with  the  list  of  similar  preparations,  whether  demanded 
as  a  retail  order,  or  as  forming  an  ingredient  in  a  physician's  recipe.  This 
course  of  action  is  due,  not  to  any  particular  keen  sense  of  honor,  but  to 
trade  expediency,  precisely  as  a  wise  fisherman  spreads  a  well-made  net  in 
order  that  the  fish  should  not  slip  through.  Any  house  in  town  or  country 
adopting  such  a  principle  must  and  does  gain  a  reputation  which  infinitely 
counterbalances  the  small  extra  remuneration  to  be  made  out  of  fictitious 
articles.  Confidence  brings  trade,  and  trade  puts  money  in  the  till — a  more 
practical  result  than  might  have  been  anticipated  from  the  study  of  pharma- 
ceutical ethics. 
This  subject  may  have  been  proposed  in  consequence  of  some  of  its  details 
not  having  been  clearly  grasped.  On  the  one  hand,  there  is  a  great  waste  of 
nusapplied  ingenuity  in  the  constant  attempt  to  pioduce  colorable  imitations 
of  preparations,  secret  or  otherwise,  which  have  gained  reputation  for  some 
particular  chemist.  Against  this  there  is  no  humsn  law;  but  the  moral  law, 
which  is  the  law  of  God,  says  such  practices  are  fraudulent,  and  beneath  the 
dignity  of  every  upright  man,  and  they  betray  a  paucity  of  inventive  power, 
and  it  is,  moreover,  certain  that  the  same  skill  might  find  more  creditable  as 
well  as  more  remunerative  employment. 
Still,  some  pharmaceutists  are  in  bondage  to  a  groundless  fear ;  they  hesi- 
tate, under  a  strained  sense  of  honor,  to  enter  upon  what  they  think  pre- 
occupied, and  therefore  forbidden  ground.  "  Why,"  writes  Mr.  Giles,  "  should 
there  be  any  speciality  in  pharmaceutical  production?  The  same  laws  will 
protect  an  invention  in  pharmacy  as  in  mechanics,  and  when  the  law  professes 
