EDITORIAL. 
377 
<£Mtoridl  ID cp ailment. 
Philadelphia  College  of  Pharmacy. — School  of  Pharmacy. — In  the 
advertisement  of  the  Lectures  of  this  School  hereto  appended,  the  commence- 
ment of  the  lectures  is  stated  October  20th,  when  it  should  be  October  6th. 
Our  readers  will  perceive  that  the  lecture  evenings  have  been  changed  from 
Tuesday,  Thursday  and  Saturday,  to  Monday,  Wednesday  and  Friday,  a 
change  made  in  accordance  with  the  wishes  of  a  number  of  employers,  who 
find  it  inconvenient  to  spare  their  apprentices  on  Saturday  evenings. 
Quack  Medicine  Labels  not  Patentable. — The  following  remarks  and 
letters  are  taken  from  the  May  number  of  the  New  York  Journal  of  Medi- 
cine. Dr.  Purple  appears  to  have  entirely  misunderstood  the  tenor  of  the 
letter  of  Judge  Conkling  as  to  the  effect  of  withholding  copyright  from  labels 
on  quack  medicines.  The  sole  object  of  such  persons  in  getting  their  labels 
patented,  is  to  prevent  others  from  putting  up  imitations  and  selling  them  for 
genuine.  Heretofore  the  maker  of  a  quack  medicine  with  a  patent  label 
could  prosecute  a  party  who  had  his  label  copied  and  issued  with  that  in- 
tent, but  now  the  quack  will  not  have  this  protection,  according  to  Secretary 
Marcy's  letter.  The  medicines  themselves  are  improperly  called  ee  patent." 
as  the  quack  is  too  shrewd  to  trust  his  recipe  with  the  patent  officers,  who 
always  publish  abstracts  of  their  contente.  We  would  have  been*glad  if 
Dr.  Purple's  idea  had  been  correct,  and  a  legal  restraint  put  on  this  great 
and  crying  evil,  which  truly  calls  for  redress  from  the  powers  that  be. 
•If  we  understand  Secretary  Marcy,  he  denies  the  protection  of  the  copy- 
right law  to  all  "mere labels"  used  as  such,  and  hence patentedlabels  for  cod- 
liver  oil,  or  cotton  goods,  or  cutleiy,  are  equally  without  virtue  in  protect- 
ing them  from  imitation. 
The  Sale  of  Patent  Medicines  a  Violation  of  Law — Important  Communica- 
tion from  the  Clerk  of  the  District  Court  of  the  Northern  District  of  New 
York. — The  following  correspondence,  which  we  now  for  the  first  time 
make  public,  clearly  establishes  the  fact,  that  the  traffic  in  patent  medicines, 
one  of  the  greatest  curses  from  which  the  community  suffers,  by  the  im- 
position of  empirics,  is  done  under  the  most  shallow  pretence  of  legality. 
It  has  always  been  a  mystery  to  us  how  honest  men  could  be  so  heedless  of 
public  good,  as  to  legalize  the  indiscriminate  sale  of  such  dangerous  com- 
pounds as  many  of  these  nostrums  are  ;  but  we  here  have  explained  the 
whole  secret.  As  might  have  been  anticipated,  from  the  character  of  the 
men  engaged  in  their  manufacture,  the  sale  of  these  drugs  is  effected  fraudu- 
lently. 
We  trust  some  measures  will  be  taken  to  put  a  stop  to  the  sale  of  these 
