26    PHYSICIANS  AND  PHARMACEUTISTS,  AND  THETR  RELATIONS. 
himself,  is  a  small  tradesman,  a  shop  keeper,  who,  instead  of 
buying  coffee  by  the  sack  and  sugar  by  the  barrel,  and  retailing 
it  by  the  pound  or  half-pound  as  required,  buys  epsom  salts  by 
the  quarter  hundred  weight,  and  senna  by  the  five  pounds,  and 
retails  them  out  by  three  or  six  cents  worth  ;  or  he  understands 
to  buy  a  dozen  of  patent  medicines,  selling  them  fromthe  six-penny 
candy  stick  to  the  $1  50  cholagogue  or  $3  00  catholicon ;  and 
if  he  chances  to  know  that  magnesia  may  be  obtained  from 
epsom  salts  and  that  opium  contains  morphia,  he  will  call  himself 
a  chemist,  and  if  he  knows  how  to  mix  rhubarb  and  magnesia,  or 
how  to  dissolve  tartar  emetic  in  water,  he  thinks  himself  justified 
to  affix  to  his  title  apothecary.  Alas  !  there  is  more  truth  in 
these  remarks  than  we  would  wish  to  believe.  We  have  heard  of 
a  Rev.  gentleman,  who  never  before  had  mortar  and  pestle  in 
his  hand ;  of  a  boarding  house  keeper,  who  well  knew  how  to 
treat  his  boarders,  but  never  had  any  idea  of  what  a  tincture  was, 
both  buying  drug  stores  in  two  large  cities  ;  one,  however,  soon 
found  out  that  it  "  would  not  do,v  and  conscientiously  returned  to 
the  pulpit ;  the  other  one  still  holds  out,  doing  a  good  busines  in 
nostrums  of  all  sorts,  having  established  the  "  principal  depot  " 
for  some  of  them  with  his  drug  shop,  where,  sad  to  say,  a  half 
a  dozen  of  prescriptions  weekly  find  their  way.  We  know  a 
retail  druggist,  the  owner  of  a  fashionable  store,  who  would  not 
prepare  Zittman's  decoction  in  a  metallic  vessel,  because  he  was 
afraid  the  "  acid  of  the  mercury  would  eat  up  the  metal  of  the 
vessel."  It  will  be  remembered  that  during  the  boiling  down  of 
this  preparation,  calomel,  enclosed  in  a  bag,  is  suspended  in  the 
liquid. 
These  and  other  instances  we  know  to  be  true ;  but  what  do 
they  prove  ?  They  simply  prove  that  there  are  a  number  of 
tradesmen  or  shopkeepers  among  the  «  retail  druggists,"  who  re- 
gard the  vocation  of  the  apothecary  as  a  gold-mine  to  be  explored 
by  any  one  who  feels  inclined  to  do  it,  without  reference  to  pharma- 
ceutical knowledge  or  ignorance.  Fortunately,  however,  a  num- 
ber of  pharmaceutists  know  the  duties  and  requisites  necessary 
for  them  to  come  up  to  the  demands  of  the  science  of  modern 
pharmacy,  and  a  science  it  has  become  now,  especially  since 
chemistry  has  been  elevated  really  to  a  science,  with  sound 
foundations,  and  has  commenced  its  researches  with  the  matter  of 
