Aim  Itch  imm'  \       Pharmacy  Hundred  Years  Ago.  195 
enough  had  been  accused  by  the  Government  of  appropriating  too 
freely  material  found  in  the  Codex.  At  his  trial,  however,  he  was 
acquitted  of  the  charge.  The  great  book  for  American  druggists 
was  Thatcher's  American  Dispensatory;  our  present  classic,  the 
United  States  Dispensatory,  not  appearing  until  1833.  The  most 
important  book  on  general  chemistry  was  Thomson's  System  of 
Chemistry,  an  English  work  in  four  volumes,  that  was  first  pub- 
lished in  America  in  1818.  Another  classic  was  Ure's  Dictionary 
of  Chemistry,  the  first!  American  edition  of  which  (edited  by 
Robert  Hare  and  Franklin  Bache)  appeared  in  1821. 
The  Medical  Botany  of  William  P.  C.  Barton,  a  handsome 
volume  with'  beautiful  colored  illustrations  of  medicinal  plants 
drawn  by  the  author,  appeared  first  in  18 18,  with  a  second  edition 
dated  1825.  It  is  interesting  to  note  the  1818  edition  was  published 
by  M.  Carey  &  Son,  while  the  1825  issue  was  distributed  by  Carey 
&  Lea,  the  predecessors  of  the  present  firm  of  Lea  &  Febiger. 
A  remarkable  book,  published  around  1 821,  is  a  neatly  bound 
volume  of  161  pages,  extolling  the  virtues  of  Swaim's  Panacea. 
After  a  description  of  this  marvelous  concoction  by  Swaim  (a 
Philadelphia  bookbinder),  the  rest  of  the  volume  is  taken  up  with 
testimonials  written  up  as  "reports  of  cases"  from  physicians,  in- 
cluding such  celebrites  as  Drs.  Valentine  Mott,  Parke  (both  dele- 
gates to  the  Pharmacopoeial  Convention  of  1820),  Dewee  and  Hall, 
the  latter  a  member  of  Congress  from  North  Carolina.  There  was 
evidently  no  Council  on  Pharmacy  and  Chemistry  in  1821. 
Pharmacy  of  182  i  and  Pharmacy  of  192 1. 
A  comparison  between  the  pharmacy  of  today  and  the  phar- 
macy of  a  century  since  would  constitute  a  paper  in  itself,  so 
merely  as  summary  it  may  be  here  stated  that  while  pharmacy  of 
1821  was  the  art  of  compounding  medicaments  and  the  sale  thereof; 
the  retail  pharmacy  of  192 1,  the  age  of  the  machine-made  goods,  is 
largely" the  art  (or  science,  if  you  will)  of  salesmanship,  the  distribu- 
tion of  the  products  of  other  men's  hands.  Deplore  it  as  we  will, 
the  machine  has  largely  replaced  the  man  in  our  calling  as  in 
many  others.  The  druggist  of  1821  was  a  merchant  of  standing, 
who  served  his  customers  with  products  made  in  his  back  room 
of  his  store,  and  in  many  cases  that  back  room  between  now  and 
then  has  grown  into  a  huge  factory.  The  pharmacist  of  192 1  has 
four  ways  in  which  he  may  utilize  his  training:  (a)  he  may  be  a 
