640  Half  Century  of  Amer.  Pharmacy.  jAmseJp0tu,r'i92iarm' 
Waters,  and  fanned  by  the  breezes  from  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  Far 
away  though  it  is,  I  doubt  whether  the  drug  business  down  there 
was  much  different  from  that  plied  up  here.  I  recall  a  fine  old 
druggist  named  Pope,  with  a  choice  store  in  a  select  neighborhood. 
An  attractive  store  it  was,  with  white  wall  fixtures  upon  the  shelves 
of  which  were  rows  of  bottles  with  gold  labels  bearing  mystic 
names ;  with  narrow  white  counters  surmounted  by  small  show  cases 
made  of  panes  of  ordinary  glass,  fastened  together  by  wooden 
frames;  with  the  dispensing  counter  and  the  soda  counter  pos- 
sessing the  "novelty"  of  marble  slabs;  with  a  soda  fountain  made  of 
marble,  shaped  like  a  cottage,  or  a  barn.  In  the  rear  there  was  a 
room  from  whence  mysterious  noises  and  still  more  mysterious 
odors  proceeded ;  the  noise  of  the  clanging  pestle  against  the  iron 
mortar,  a  symphony  I  was  destined  to  produce  many  times  a  decade 
or  so  later ;  the  odor  of  wild  cherry,  of  aloes,  of  turpentine  and  of 
valerian.  There  was  another  drug  store,  that  of  Dr.  Hastings,  that 
enthralled  me  still  more,  for  from  it  proceeded  an  odor  that  blended 
all  of  the  mystery  of  centuries  of  incantation  and  drug  magic.  The 
memory  of  that  odor  clung  to  me  until  my  student  days;  when 
delving  in  the  stinks  of  chemistry,  I  recognize  my  old  friend  of  the 
Hastings  pharmacy  in  Mercaptane.  Here  is  a  clue  for  the  pharma- 
ceutical historian.  Did  Dr.  Hastings  anticipate  sulphonal  and  its 
congeners?  before  the  historian  goes  too  far  in  this  quest,  I  might 
add  that  I  understand  that  Dr.  Hastings  had  installed  upon  his 
premises  an  apparatus  for  making  his  own  illuminating  gas. 
Then  there  was  in  New  Orleans  in  the  seventies  the  drug  store 
of  Thomas  Finlay,  a  well-trained  pharmacist,  the  great  prescription- 
ist  of  the  English-speaking  medical  men ;  a  store  from  whence  sprang 
his  nephew,  Alexander  K.  Finlay,  thirty-ninth  president  of  the 
American  Pharmaceutical  Association.  Across  Canal  Street,  the 
mystic  line  separating  the  New  Orleans  from  the  old;  in  the  old 
French  quarter  famed  in  song  and  story,  there  were  pharmaciens 
of  ability  and  of  worth;  there  were  drug  "stores  that  rarely  came 
before  the  eyes  of  the  American  boy  now  telling  you  the  story. 
There  were  Laplace,  Cusach  and  Robin,  leaders  among  their  phar- 
maceutical confreres. 
And  now  to  jump  from  the  Gulf  to  the  Lakes,  from  the  land  of 
the  palmetto  to  the  land  of  the  maple,  I  leave  to  you,  who  know 
better  than  I,  the  picturing  of  those  goodly  men  of  the  Province  of 
