STATE OF PHARMACY IN THE UNITED STATES. 271 
ART. XLV. — A BRIEF SKETCH OF THE PROGRESS AND 
PRESENT STATE OF PHARMACY IN THE UNITED 
STATES OF AMERICA. By Wm. R. Fisher, Graduate of Phar- 
macy, and Associate Member of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. 
(~ Read before the Maryland Academy of Science and Literature. J 
There have been, as yet, but few legislative enactments 
intended to control or direct the exercise of the profession of 
Pharmacy. Like most other branches of industry in this 
country, its regulation has been left to the honesty of those 
who pursue it, and the all controlling influence of public 
opinion; and the improvements, which have hitherto been 
made, are attributable chiefly to the latter cause, exercising 
itself in an increased competition, and the necessary conse- 
quence, greater efforts to attract custom, by a more careful 
attention to the qualities of the medicines, required for family 
use, as well as neatness and cleanness observed in dispensing 
them. The business of the apothecary, or druggist and chem- 
ist, as he is generally styled, is limited exclusively to the pre- 
paration and sale of medicines; and hence, the influence of 
competition is more directly felt than would otherwise be the 
case, if he united in his person the more enlarged duties which 
are undertaken by the class in England under the same 
denomination. 
But notwithstanding the influence of competition in pro- 
ducing the effects above alluded to, the Science of Pharmacy 
is but illy practised throughout this country. The great 
temptations which exist, to increase profits by the purchase of 
cheap articles, and the absence of nearly all legal qualifications 
necessary to conduct the business, offer sufficient reasons why 
this department of Medical Science should be so far behind its 
collateral branches in its practical operations. 
It was but recently, that the practice of compounding pre- 
scriptions in the office of the physician, existed universally 
throughout this country, and still does to a great extent, ex- 
