38o 
Compounding  and  Dispensing. 
j  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
\     August,  1909. 
This  is  a  new  field.  The  State  Board  has  only  made  a  beginning 
in  this  department  of  its  work.  The  present  conditions  of  affairs, 
the  trend  of  public  opinion  and  professional  spirit  demand 
that  the  work  shall  proceed.  The  number  of  prosecutions  are  con- 
stantly increasing  and  I  predict  that  this  will  eventually  become  a 
most  fruitful  source  of  litigation.  The  duty  of  preserving  and  con- 
serving the  welfare  of  the  public  and,  as  well,  the  rights  of  the 
profession  have  been  delegated  to  the  State  Pharmaceutical  Exam- 
ining Board  and  the  responsibility  for  the  future  progress  in  this 
field  rests  with  that  department  of  the  Commonwealth. 
There  is  an  Augean  stable  to  be  cleaned  and  the  effort  will  be 
bitterly  resented  and  fiercely  contested  by  the  important  interests 
attacked.  The  removal  of  the  opportunity  for  illicit  gains  of  the 
quasi  druggist,  the  manufacturer,  the  wholesale  grocer,  and  that 
army  of  proprietary  medicine  dealers  masquerading  under  the  name 
of  druggist  is  bound  to  be  opposed.  Ethical  and  scientific  as  well  as 
legal  problems  are  involved.  It  would  be  well  to  see  that  your 
interests  in  the  strenuous  days  to  come  are  in  the  hands  of  capable, 
fearless  men,  men  of  integrity,  foresight,  and  recognized  standing. 
Aside  from  the  statutory  enactments  above  referred  to,  which 
are  treated  as  a  branch  of  criminal  procedure,  there  is  that  other 
branch  of  the  law  which  is  applied  in  the  civil  Courts.  The  phar- 
macist is  bound  to  consider  that  vast  body  of  law,  the  foundation 
of  which  is  found  in  the  generic  principles  of  the  law  of  contracts, 
sales,  negligence,  and  agency. 
It  is  not  my  purpose,  nor  is  this  the  occasion,  to  refer  to  a  mass 
of  cases  or  to  consider  the  various  questions  and  phases  of  questions 
and  the  refined  distinctions  made  by  the  Courts  of  the  land  generally 
on  these  subjects.  Added  to  the  regulations  imposed  by  statute,  the 
pharmacist  would  verily  believe  that  he  was  travelling  over  legal 
quicksands  that  threatened  every  moment  to  engulf  him.  My  subject 
confines  me  to  a  consideration  of  these  principles  as  applied  to  con- 
ditions developed  out  of  the  practice  of  pharmacy,  and  my  duty  I 
conceive  to  be  to  deduce  certain  general  working  principles.  These 
principles  are  similar  to  and  have  developed  out  of  the  law  govern- 
ing commercial  transactions.  The  nature  of  the  pharmacist's  busi- 
ness, however,  imparts  to  his  business  a  greater  degree  of  respon- 
sibility in  proportion  to  its  hazardous  nature. 
The  pharmacist  contracts  to  use  the  right  kind  of  drugs,  drugs 
that  are  of  proper  strength,  and  to  compound  such  drugs  with  a 
degree  of  care  made  necessary  by  his  peculiar  business  and  the 
