VOL. XIX.

EDITORIAL.

No. 1.

Mr. Thomas Layton, President of the Missouri Pharmaceutical Association for 1897-8, is the gentleman whose likeness appears upon the cover of the MEYER BROTHERS DRUGGIST for January. Mr. Layton's work in the St. Louis Apothecaries' Association, the State organization, the Retail Druggists' Interstate League, the St. Louis College of Pharmacy, the A. Ph. A., and in fact wherever a retail pharmacist can work for the organization and improvement of his professsion, renders the name familiar to our readers. A more extended sketch of his life appears on page 16. of this issue.

Did it Pay you to handle holiday goods?

Bind the MEYER BROTHERS DRUGGIST for 1897. Want Advertisements are free of charge to our subscribers.

The Doctor's Window will furnish sunshine for all who read it.

Remember this is 1898, although by habit you continue to write 1897.

Microscopy can be studied at home by aid of Gage's Microscopical Methods.

If You Want a formula that will work, write to the MEYER BROTHERS DRUGGIST.

Our Price List is the most complete published in any pharmaceutical periodical.

Only Eight Months to the August 29, 1898, meeting of the A. Ph. A. at Baltimore, Md.

The Index to the MEYER BROTHERS DRUGGIST for 1897 is supplied with this issue of the journal.

A Strict Financial Account of your business for 1898 will prove instructive as well as interesting at the close of the year.

Good Resolutions for 1898 are now feeling the strain of time. May a good proportion of them last to see the end of the year.

Unusual Prescriptions interesting to pharmacists are solicited for reproduction in the columns of the MEYER BROTHERS DRUGGIST.

Illinois Pharmacists will gather at Clifton Terrace, June 6, for their annual convention. Many visitors from other States will be with them.

The Competent, progressive and conscientous pharmacists largely deserve the good things of this world. May 1898 bring them an abundance.

Only Three Years to the close of the Nineteenth Century. May they be years of plenty and prosperity for the readers of the MEYER BROTHERS DRUGGIST.

The Facts About Vanilla published on pages 436 and 437 of the MEYER BROTHERS DRUGGIST for December are very interesting, as evidenced by the comments we have received on the article.

Pharmacists Visiting St. Louis are always welcome at the offices of the MEYER BROTHERS DRUGGIST, 316 Clark avenue. Desk room, pharmaceutical and medical periodicals and our library are all at your disposal.

The Standard Formulary is largely the work of Dr. Albert E. Ebert, who has contributed such excellent formulas to the MEYER BROTHERS DRUGGIST. This is sufficient testimony to induce any practical druggist to purchase the volume.

The St. Louis Drug Clerks' Society already has fame, and fortune will be in evidence if the scheme proposed by one of the prominent members is executed. The proposition comprehends the establishment of a home for drug clerks in this city. May it soon be realized.

The Credit System is an absolute necessity under present business conditions. The logical consideration of the system given on page 478 of this journal for December means dollars and cents to those who carefully study the contribution to sound business methods and follow the advice.

Ancient Pharmacy in Mexico at the time of the Spanish Conquest is being considered in an interesting and instructive manner by our Mexican Correspondent, Dr. B. F. G. Egeling. The series of articles commenced with the December issue and will continue through several numbers.

Better and Perhaps Cheaper Sponges will result from proper legislation protecting the raising of this important animal whose skeleton forms such a necessary commercial article.

The editor of our

Sponge Department has some practical hints on the subject this month, and we hope the National Fisheries Congress will act upon the suggestions.

Our German-Reading Friends will be interested in a well-written piece of poetry, which appears on page 46 of the MEYER BROTHers Druggist for January. It was written by Mr. Albert Borée of Strassburg-Elsass and first published in the Pharmaceutische Zeitung. The November and December issues of our journal contained equally interesting effusions from the same author and no doubt are being greatly enjoyed by those who read them.

Improve the Pharmacopœia.—We hope that all of our readers studied what Dr. G. H. Chas. Klie, Chairman of the M. Ph. A. Committee on United States Pharmacopoeia said on the subject on page 475 of our December issue. It is the doctor's idea to find out the present status of this work with Missouri pharmacists. The pharmacists of the State should heartily co-operate with the doctor in his good work, and similar committees for other States can advantageously follow the example of this committee.

International Pharmaceutical Education is occasionally presented as a legitimate subject for discussion. We feel that those who waste time on it do not realize the full perview of the topic. Prof. Gustavus Hinrichs expressed the conditions very tersely at the Chicago meeting of the International Pharmaceutical Congress when he called attention to the great difference between the pursuit of pharmacy in English-speaking countries and that pursuit in other

countries. He said:

The discussion of the question whether the student of phar macy should know Greek or not might arise in Belgium, but we never discuss such a question in the United States.

The condition of things in the United States is very largely accounted for by special conditions and the historic development of the country.

It should be borne in mind that while much is demanded of the pharmacist in continental Europe, by way of education, much is also given in return. In Germany, Sweden and other continental countries the right to open a pharmacy is conferred by the government, and the practice of pharmacy is limited to a prescribed number of stores. Were we to introduce such a system in the United States, nine-tenths of the drug stores would be abolished.

Our students of pharmacy would be willing to spend eight years in study, if we had a law limiting competition in business sufficiently.

We can discuss this question of pharmaceutical education in the United States among ourselves in the American Pharmaceutical Association, or with our English and Canadian brethren, but it is useless to discuss a unification of the standards of pharmaceutical education of all nations so long as the English-speaking countries do not grant to the practitioners of pharmacy privileges equal to those enjoyed by the pharmacists of other countries.

Irregularities in Our Tariff.—It is reasonable to suppose that every citizen of the United States is of the opinion that it is necessary to obtain a revenue by levying a duty on imported goods or merchandise. In regard to how great these duties should be on the respective articles and on what article the same should be levied, great differences of opinion exist. These ideas are actuated by people of selfish motives, and partly by prejudices which are based on opinions as to what is best for the country. Quite a difference of judgment also exists as to what extent home industries should be protected by the imposition of a duty.

We can readily see that it is a very difficult subject to agree upon in the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, which consist of so large a number of men. It is quite evident that a great many articles pay a higher duty than is advisable-take e. g. camphor-crude camphor is free, refined camphor pays a duty of 6c. per pound. All the crude camphor comes from China and Japan. The refining costs

very little more in this country than in Europe-the result is that virtually no refined camphor is imported -what is the result? The government realizes

nothing whatever in the way of a revenue, which is the primary object of the tariff, hence it is evident, if the duty was say 2 to 3 cents, it would still afford the refineries in this country an advantage, and it would also most likely give an opportunity to import the article and thus yield an income for the United States Treasury.

The Same Argument Applies to Borax.-Our resources of crude borax are greater in this country than anywhere else in the world and hence it is unwise, to say the least, to impose a heavy duty of 5c. per pound on crude and refined borax. We believe that extreme high duties are not for the best interest of the country at large. When they are imposed it is generally brought about by influences that are morally wrong. Why is There no Duty on Quinine? We think that a moderate duty should be imposed on this article. When the duty was abandoned it was done through the influence of one single individual, who at that time was a man of great influence in congress. One of the arguments was that the poor should have cheap | quinine, and the other, that the manufacturers at that time were very wealthy.

As to the first point, anyone who knows anything about business principles will know that a duty as above indicated will have no effect as to the cost of quinine to the consumer, and as to the second, it is simply rediculous. No one can go into the manufacture of quinine unless he has a large amount of capital. We must also state here that the American manufacturers have never reaped the full benefit of the duty imposed in former times. During the civil war, from 1860-65, even when gold was at a high premium, quinine never reached an exhorbitant high price, in fact, it can be safely asserted that quinine was less affected by the general inflation of prices than any other article of merchandise.

If the object was to have the poor obtain quinine at little cost, why do we exact a duty of 25 per cent on Phenacetine, which is already a very expensive article and used almost as universally as quinine; it is made expensive by our patent laws which offer inducements to smugglers. We have never heard of quinine being smuggled even when it had a protection of 20 per cent in duty.

The Evil Effect of Smoking is still a debatable point and we hear much on both sides of the question. Some cranks expect to live a century because they do not smoke and other abnormal people count on 100 years of life because "Uncle John" was 102 when he died and had used the weed for eighty-five years. But statistics are interesting and we find them as far back as 1855, when Dr. Bertillon, the most eminent writer on medical statistics of his time, found on inquiry made by him concerning the pupils of the Polytechnic School of Paris that 108 of the pupils smoked and fifty-two did not smoke. He then arranged the 160 pupils into eight divisions, according

to the place they held in the examination, twenty in each rank, and found that of the twenty who stood highest, six were smokers and fourteen non-smokers. Of the next twenty, ten were smokers and ten nonsmokers; of the next twenty, eleven smoked and nine did not smoke, thus showing how much higher the non-smoker stood intellectually than the habitual smokers. He also found that the mean rank of the smoker, as compared with the non-smoker, deteriorated from their entering to their leaving the school. As a result of Bertillon's inquiry, the Minister of Pub lic Instruction of France issued a circular, addressed to the directors of schools and colleges, forbidding the use of tobacco and cigars to students. In spite of these interesting facts, the soda-fountain apprentice who gives up his cigarettes must not expect to have his superior mental power at once stamp him as a

Maisch or Curtman.

STRAY ITEMS AND COMMENTS.

Strychnine poison is now treated with camphor as an antidote.

You Can Sell your store if you advertise in the columns of this journal.

A Situation awaits you. To find it, advertise in the MEYER BROTHERS DRUGGIST.

One Want brings another, and a microscope denands a copy of Gage's Microscopical Methods.

Not so Old After All.-Recent estimates by scientists of the age of the earth have changed the speculation from 20,000,000,000,000 years to 20,000,000 years. The world continues to revolve, permitting scientists to speculate at their own sweet will.

Has it a Pharmacist, if so, does he counter prescribe? We refer to North Bergen, a small town in New Jersey, where the township authorities are unable to find a physician. The search was made when the State authorities asked them to appoint a health officer.

As a result of Women in pharmacy we are liable

Our Mexican Correspondent is furnishing some very interesting items from that section of the country. A Druggist of Brooklyn, N. Y., was convicted on November 3 of practicing medicine without a diplo

ma.

He was committed to jail to await sentence. Medicine is a Trade in England, according to the courts in that country. This will not deter the physicians from considering themselves professional men.

Incompatibilities in prescriptions, by Prof. F. A. Ruddiman, was reviewed in the "Editor's Table" of

the MEYER BROTHERS DRUGGIST for November. See page 393.

When the St. Louis Drug Clerks' Home and Hospital is erected the city will have one more feature to distinguish it from other large commercial and educational centers.

Temporary Certificates are issued by the Arkansas Board of Pharmacy. They hold good only until the date of the next meeting. This date is officially announced by the MEYER BROTHERS DRUGGIST.

Our Readers are requested to send items of news and comments for publication, questions for our "Quiz Department," problems for our "Prescription Case Department," and requests for formulas that will work.

Success as Seen by one of our exchanges devoted to advertising, is worthy of recognition, although applied to by the advertiser calling his rivals stupid, grasping creatures, suckers, silk-stocking usurers and vampires.

Druggist Fined.-A New York druggist has been fined $150.00 for practicing medicine without a license. This is the heaviest fine yet imposed for such an offense. The Medical Society of the County of New York was the complainant.

An Honest Question demands an honest answer, at least so goes the old adage, but one of our English exchanges seems to be greatly disturbed when a reader asks a simple question in a rather vague manner. Perhaps the editor has never experienced the life of a retail pharmacist in a small place far removed from the customary sources of information.

place of "he or she." Women in pharmacy are becoming so numerous that it is inconvenient and somewhat cumbersome to say "he or she" when speaking of pharmacists. Who will supply the missing word?

Horse Sense we suppose was exhibited by a spirited animal with such a dangerous disposition that although fine blooded, he could not be used as a work horse. The horse was pressed into service in the new occupation of manufacturing anti-toxin serum. Strange to say, the animal did not object to the hypodermic injections. In fact, he seemed to enjoy the operation, the physician in charge saying that he stood "quietly looking around with intelligence while the injections were made."

That Special Examination for pharmacists appearing on page 449 of our December issue has attracted considerable attention. The following are among those who were first to send us correct papers: Dr. Rosa Liebig, Portage, Wis.; Dr. J. J. Schubert, Kankakee, Ill.; Wm. Gausewitz, Owatonna, Minn.; W. F. Reinig, Ravanna, Mo.; J. A. Ginnochio, Little Rock, Ark., and G. J. F. Schmitt, San Antonio, Tex. They all agree with the following: (I) Isinglass, (2) Mandrake, (3) Catechu, (4) Licorice.

A Free Advertisement of public interest.

From the National Advertiser.

The Validity of a note given in renewal of another note is not affected by failure of the holder to surrender the old note.

Buy the best goods in the market.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

Any book reviewed in this Department may be obtained upon receipt of price at the office of the DRuggist.

The Missouri Botanical Garden's eighth annual report of the year 1897 is at hand. The book is much larger than any of its predecessors and contains a large number of carefully-executed drawings, adding materially to the knowledge of the subject of azores. The volume is for sale by Dr. A. L. Foote of Philadelphia.

What a Young Man Ought to Know. The first book in a Self and Sex series to boys and men. By Sylvanus Stall, D. D. Vir Publishing Co., 416 Hale Building, Philadelphia. Price, $1.00.

This little book is designed to answer in an honest and reverent way the questions which arise in the mind of every boy concerning his own origin and how he came into the world. It tells just what every boy should be told about the design and care of the reproductive organs and in such a way as to beget reverence and inspire purity of thought and life. For purity, clearness and intensity this book is without a rival in literature of its class. The author understands his subject and handles it in a most religious and scientific, artful and interesting manner. It is just such a book as physicians can heartily commend to parents, young boys and young men.

Pharmacopoeia of the American Institute of Homeopathy, published for the Committee on Pharmacopoeia of the American Institute of Homeopathy. Boston, Otis Clapp & Son, agents, 10 Park Square, 1897. Published by the Pharmacopoeia Committee of the American Institute of Homeopathy in one volume, 670 pages. Price, cloth, $4.25, net; half morocco, $5.00, net. Delivered in any part of the United States.

We learn from the historical sketch given in this work that the idea of issuing such a volume was first advanced in 1868 by a resolution in the American Institute of Homeopathy. It was not, however, until 1897 that the book was ready for distribution. This is not, however, the first pharmacopoeia of the kind, for in 1883 the American Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia was compiled and published by Boericke & Tafel, the work having reached the fourth edition in 1890.

The

The volume before us contains 674 pages. chapter on General Pharmacy of Drugs for Homeopathic Use is what will especially interest the average pharmacist and should be read by all who desire to be posted on the principles of homeopathic pharmacy. Part II, devoted to Special Pharmaceutics, will prove of value as a work of reference for those who have occasion to manufacture preparations.

The work is well printed, fairly well bound and contains tables of weights and measures, with due reference to the Metric System, tables selected from the United States Pharmacopoeia, a valuable list of medicines and their pronunciation and an unusually complete index.

The Principles of Bacteriology. A practical manual for students and physicians. By A. C. Abbott, M. D., Professor of Hygiene and Director of the Laboratory of Hygiene, Uni

versity of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Fourth edition, enlarged and thoroughly revised. Handsome 12mo., 542 pages, 106 illustrations, of which nineteen are colored, Cloth, $2.75. Philadelphia and New York, Lea Brothers & Co., publishers.

This is a new edition of a book which we have more than once pointed out as the most suitable guide for pharmacists working in bacteriology. An inspection of the medical college announcements show that Professor Abbott's work is also the favorite among the many text-books in that market. It skillfully selects from its vast science the knowledge of real importance to the student and practitioner and presents it with directness and with ample instructions for laboratory work. The favor it has merited both as a text-book and as a guide for clinical use has given it one important peculiarity, as the frequent calls for new editions have enabled the author to keep it constantly revised and in touch with the rapid advance of its progressive subject. Large editions have moreover rendered possible a very moderate price, a consideration of interest to the student. The work is handsomely illustrated.

The Doctor's Window, edited by Ana Russelle Warren, with an introduction by William Pepper, M. D., L.L. D., has received attention in this journal for September and December. The work is ready for distribution and we have had the pleasure of examining a copy. The selections are those upon which it would be difficult for any improvement to be made. The volume contains several poems of special interest to pharmacists as well as others of general interest to the profession. The volume will form a very appropriate present where a pharmacist cares to remember some physician with a holiday token. It is published by Charles Wells Moulton, Buffalo, N. Y., and sold only on the subscription plan, the price being, in cloth, $2.50, net; in half morocco, $5.00, net. From the list of pieces especially interesting to pharmacists we select the following verses since women in pharmacy is such a timely topic :

There in the corner pharmacy
This lithesome lady lingers,
And potent pills and philters true
Are fashioned by her fingers.
Her face behind the soda fount,
May oft be seen in summer,
How sweetly foams the soda fizz
When you receive it from her.
While mixing belladonna drops
With tincture of lobelia,
And putting up prescription she
Is fairer than Ophelia.

Each poison has its proper place,
Each potion in its chalice;
Her daedal fingers are so deft
They call her digit Alice.

Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley.

Capsicum. When the berries on a spike of the pepper plant begin to turn red the spike is cut off and the berries gathered. If left too long, until perfect ripeness is attained, there is a great loss occasioned by the berries falling off and the quality of the product is by no means so good.