384 
EDITORIAL. 
drug dealers. But of what avail are legal enactments, when those 
who put them in force are not capable of deciding just where they 
should be brought to bear % Of what use is the present congressional 
Act, if the Special Examiners are not qualttied men ? None — worse 
than none — for under the cover of their inspection worthless articles 
would be scattered over the land with the custom house stamp upon 
them. Nothing will be so effectual therefore, as the dissemination 
and cultivation of that practical knowledge which will enable the 
medical and pharmaceutical consumers, if we may so speak, to judge 
for themselves. Take the graduates of any one season, from even the 
best of our medical schools, and the majority of them will be found 
little versed in the practical means of detecting adulterations, or even 
in the knowledge derived from books. Take the majority of those 
who sell and prepare drugs, and it will be found that there is a great 
deficiency in this knowledge. We must, therefore, begin at home. 
Let every apothecary exercise himself in the critical examination of 
drugs, microscopically, chemically, and by their more sensible pro- 
perties. Let every physician, old and young, give more attention to 
the sources whence he is supplied with drugs and medicines. Let 
physicians in general keep a wholesome watchfulness over the apothe- 
caries that supply their patients and themselves. Not that querulous 
fault-finding suspicion, which is sometimes exhibited by medical men 
whose judgment is far short of their pretensions, but that brotherly 
watchful interest which is as fruitful in good, in medical morals, as in 
the ordinary economy of society. Finally, let the physician and 
the pharmaceutist keep each within his own sphere of action, and by 
mutual good feeling jointly advance the interests of their benevolent 
profession, whose kindly and soothing influence extends into every 
home over our wide spread country. 
