546         Constructive  Public  Service  in  Pharmacy.       j A  AuguX  i92irm* 
there  has  not  been  introduced  as  yet  an  efficient  method  for  standard- 
izing them. 
These  preparations  are  standardized  by  different  methods,  in 
many  instances,  each  manufacturer  using  a  supposedly  pet  method 
supplied  by  their  own  laboratories.  It  would  be  advisable  to  adopt 
a  uniform  method  for  standardizing  these  products  which  should  be 
approved  by  the  Hygienic  Laboratory  and  recognized  in  the  next 
revision  of  the  Pharmacopoeia  (as  are  other  biological  assays).  The 
U.  S.  P.  might  at  the  same  time  include  a  method  or  procedure  for 
making  an  efficient  specific  blood  coagulant. 
CONSTRUCTIVE  PUBLIC  SERVICE  IN  PHARMACY. 
By  Charles  H.  La  Wall,  Ph.M. 
Address  Delivered  at  the  Centennial  Celebration,  Tuesday, 
June  14,  1921. 
During  the  several  thousand  years  through  which  the  profession 
of  pharmacy  may  be  historically  traced,  it  has  undergone  many  in- 
teresting changes  and  vicissitudes.  Its  evolution  has  been  irregular 
and  in  some  respects  disappointing.  The  reason  for  this  is  found  in 
its  lack  of  uniformity.  It  has  always  been  heterogeneous,  and  its 
heterogeneity  has  been  variable. 
The  physician-pharmacist  was  successively  replaced  by  the 
alchemist-pharmacist,  the  grocer-pharmacist,  the  chemist-pharmacist, 
and  later  by  the  merchant-pharmacist.  Through  all  these  metamor- 
phoses there  has,  however,  remained  a  distinctiveness  of  service  which 
has  been  obscured  at  times,  but  which  in  its  fundamentals  has  re- 
tained one  important  phase  of  public  contact  and  service — the  prepa- 
ration and  sale  of  medicines. 
From  the  most  primitive  beginnings,  in  which  mysticism  and 
credulity  prevailed,  and  in  which  empiricism  held  full  sway,  down 
to  the  present  time,  when  a  highly  specialized  technical  and  scientific 
training  is  required  by  the  State  for  the  protection  of  the  public 
which  pharmacy  serves,  the  dominating  purpose  has  been  to  assem- 
ble, identify,  select,  preserve,  prepare  and  standardize  remedial  sub- 
stances, which  in  the  hands  of  the  careless  or  unskilled  might  prove 
detrimental  instead  of  beneficial. 
The  history  of  this  famous  art  is  a  fascinating  chapter  of  human 
