One of the most potent influences at present at work in moulding and modifying American pharmacy comes from Germany. The Teutonic spirit has quietly and steadily permeated our business methods, pharmaceutical laws, societies, colleges and Pharmacopoeia until now these are really as much or more Germanic in type than English. A multitude of German pharmacists having settled here brought with them from the fatherland the remembrance of home methods. Seeing evils in American pharmacy from which the German is almost wholly or entirely free, what was more natural than that they should conclude that the cure of such evils could only be accomplished by copying German methods. No fair observer of results can doubt or deny that great benefit has come to us from our doing so. The only question now is how much farther can we go in this Germanization of American pharmacy and still reap benefit therefrom?

Armed with this thought the writer invaded the empire of the great house of Hohenzollern for the purpose of personally investigating the practical workings of the Teutonic ideal on its own native soil. Stores were visited in Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne, Coblentz, Bingen, Frankfort-on-the-Main, Darmstadt, Heidelberg, Strasburg, and Schaffhausen. In the smaller towns it was expected that difficulty would be experienced in finding pharmacists sufficiently well acquainted with English to give the desired information. In Berlin and Hamburg it was an unexpected surprise to discover that but a small proportion of the stores visited had Englishspeaking help as compared with the number of places in our cities where German-speaking pharmacists can be found.

German drug stores possess none of the cheerful beauty that characterizes those of America where any approach to taste is displayed. There are no brilliant show-cases filled with cut-glass bottles, fancy colognes, or handsome toilet articles. The glitter of the silver faucets and parti-colored onyx or marble walls of sodafountains is unknown. Jardinieres, flowers, fancy vases, gilt pedestals and illuminated show-globes would be an abomination in that land. Everything is plain, dull, and funereal. The patron enters, hat in hand, with a look that betokens not respect alone, but, one almost might believe, fear, lest he should offend the great man who waits upon him behind the plain, dark, narrow counter. The shelves are loaded with jars and bottles much like

our own, but the number of jars is usually far in excess of the bottles. A few patent medicines are displayed, and some of the windows contain a few goods and showbottles that bear a faint resemblance to our own.

There are at present 5162 such pharmacies in the German Empire, and all of them are under direct government supervision. No new one can be started until a census shows a growth of population in the region sufficiently large to support one without infringing on the rights before granted to other pharmacies in that district. The exact spot where it shall be located is fixed by the government. The divisions of the allotted space of the building must conform with the general plan of all other establishments of the same kind. There must be the various store rooms for special purposes, and a laboratory fitted up in a specified manner. It must contain certain kind of apparatus, and these must always be kept in good conditon. No pharmacist knows at what moment the inspectors may drop in upon him, and he is quite sure that they will come at periods not very far apart. These inspectors report to the central government exactly how they find things, so that at any time the Minister of State can tell what is going on in every drug store in the empire. The violation of any specified order of the Pharmacopoeia is likely to bring punishment on the head of the offender, or in extreme cases the loss of his pharmacy. A dirty floor, dirty shelves, dusty bottles or damp, musty rooms are offenses against the law that lay the lazy or careless liable to penalty. To have drugs in packages, drawers or bottles containing labels that are not true to them, to have prescription scales or weights that vary from the standard, to have a night bell that cannot easily be rung, to have odorous drugs where they can impart odor to odorless ones, to have drugs exposed to light that should be kept in the dark, to have drugs in the dark that should be in the light, to have drugs in warm places that should be kept cool, to have drugs in bottles that should be in jars, to have drugs in jars that should be in bottles, to have imperfect stoppers to bottles that should be perfect, to have dim unreadable labels or labels that can only be read with difficulty, to have no labels where there should be labels, are all offenses against the law that no pharmacist dares to have reported against him. It would not be safe for any one to permit the inspector to take down a smeary syrup or oil vessel, or to get his fingers soiled

on the outside of an ointment jar. Even the quantities and kinds of drugs that must be carried are fixed by law. To be found without a given drug or with an insufficient quantity of the same would be tempting fate. All poisons must be kept by themselves, weighed in scales not used for anything else, and powdered in mortars set apart for this particular purpose. To find such scales or mortars deviating from scrupulous cleanliness, endangers the pharmacist. When the inspectors call, they not only look after all these things, but they examine the library and see that it has the proper number and kinds of books, and the herbarium to see that it meets requirements. Probably their most important function is the examination of drugs as to their quality: every article must correspond with the demands of the Pharmacopoeia; tinctures, syrups, fluid extracts and other liquids must have the proper specific gravities and answer to the characteristics of the drugs represented.

It is evident from these demands that the education of a German pharmacist must excel that of the average American in the same profession. This again is confirmed when we learn that even the country pharmacist is a chemical expert who makes toxicological analyses for courts in poisoning cases, determines the quality of drinking waters for his region, and does other equally difficult work. This is why Germany stands alone in having produced so many great chemists who began their careers in this profession. A few of the best known are Fresenius, Kekule, Mohr, Hoffmann, Hager, Liebig, Bunsen, Merck, Flückiger, and Menstucken. Take these names out of the history of chemistry, and a hiatus would be left of enormous size. Our civilization without them would lack many of its most distinctive features. This, too, accounts for the fact that their Verein Deutscher Naturforscher und Aerzte has a section devoted to pharmacy, while our American Association for the Advancement of Science leaves it wholly unrepresented.

No one is permitted to become an apprentice in a drug store there until he has graduated in one of the high schools. For the privilege, too, he must pay from $100 to $500 to his employer and enter without wages. He must bind himself to remain three years, and agrees to study diligently during that time. His high-school diploma represents a knowledge of mathematics, including algebra, arithmetic, and geometry both plain and spherical, grammar, geography, history, Latin, French, elementary chemistry, elementary botany, and natural philosophy. He is soon set to work studying prescriptions, making pharmacopoeial preparations, using the microscope, testing the quality of drugs, and studying pharmacology, toxicology, botany, and advanced chemistry. Before he has completed his full three years he is expected to be able to partly free his employer from his care as to quality in purchasing much of the stock, and in a way that will make everything safe when the Commissarius calls. At the end of his third year an ex

amination lasting nearly a week begins, and both Commissarius and Medicinalbeamte must be satisfied as to his progress before he is permitted to begin his career of another three years as assistant. When the six years are ended he goes to a university, where he must spend eighteen months to two years of close, continuous study. With all the work he has done up to the present time, his position in the university is an inferior one: those students that are seeking for a degree consider him their inferior in station and knowledge. When he has completed three terms of about six months each at the university, he is permitted to attend the State-examination, and in the event of successfully passing he becomes a full-fledged apothecary with all the rights and privileges which the name confers.

But, alas, on reaching this point ambition is likely to lose its stimulus and disappear unless he is rich and willing to pay a fabulously inflated price for a store. By rare good luck he may discover a location where the growth of population permits of a new concession. By something akin to our American "pull" he may succeed in securing it, but such is the chance of a lifetime. These government concessions cost from $1500 in small country districts to $5000 in densely populated regions. Once they are secured, the owners are not permitted to sell or give them up within ten years, except for cause such as incapacitating illness. Neither must the owners engage in any other kind of employment. At the end of the ten years the conditions would certainly be extraordinary in which they would be willing to sell except at highly inflated rates. To secure such concessions by purchase, it has been customary until lately to pay from $5000 for country establishments to $60,000 for city ones. The original cost of the concession and the value of stock and fixtures have been figured on as worth but a small fraction of the value of the business itself. This appalling fact meets the young apotheker face to face at the very beginning of his career, if he has not realized its full meaning before. Could he only secure a concession from the government or obtain the money with which to buy one, he has always thought that fortune and honor lay before him. To fail in this he must either quit the business that he has spent the best part of his life in trying to prepare for, or be content to serve an employer for a mere pittance. As a manager he can only hope to secure from $400 to $500 per year, or under exceptional circumstances $600. Think of American drug clerks working as managers for $8.00 per week! At this miserable rate of wages the supply far exceeds the demand.

For nearly a century the German Goverment has been in incessant worry over pharmacy concessions. The sales to second parties at fabulous prices have created a continuous scandal. The inability of young pharmacists to progress beyond a certain point because of the high wall of protection thrown around the favored few, has inspired bitter feeling between employers and

employés and encouraged socialistic and anarchistic sentiment. The Pharmaceuten Verein, representing the employed, has clamored for free pharmacy. It has demanded the total obliteration of class privileges and the free opening of the country for every qualified apothecary to start a drug store where and when he pleases. Radical as is this demand, it has found willing ears at the seat of government, and attempts have been made, and are likely again to be made, in this direction. The favorite cure at present for this unrest is an attempt to slowly modify all the concessions and bring them under new terms. In 1894 the work was begun of limiting the life of a concession to the life of the individual who holds it, and stopping the barter and sale thereof. There are now 764 out of the total of 5162 stores placed under this new ruling. The apparent owners do not own them at all: they are practically neither more nor less than government officers without fixed pay. Their income depends upon their receipts. The price advanced for the concession and the cost of fixtures and goods amounts to no more to them than security deposits to gain the situation. If the bargain proves a bad one, they cannot vacate it for ten years. If it proves a good one and, by tact, they increase its value by increasing its business, neither they nor their heirs could realize on this sale or at death. This unfavorable attitude of the government has cast a gloom over the land. The holders of good, unlimited concessions fear the consequences to themselves. Those who have bought their rights at highly inflated rates are in agony; they can no longer realize any such rates for their property. Where they bought by part payments and placed mortgages for the balance, they are finding that their holdings are in danger of becoming worth less than the mortgage. They are all threatened with what practically amounts to government confiscation. The Deutscher Apotheker Verein (German Apothecaries' Society), representing as it does the owners of stores, is bitterly opposed to all this. It has seventy-nine branches in different parts of the empire, and 3336 members. It has existed as at present organized for twenty-five years, but really represents German pharmacy for seventy-five years. It holds annual meetings, publishes a semi-weekly journal known as the Apotheker Zeitung, a year-book, and the Archives of Pharmacy. This body now declares through its president that the only cure for the ills here pointed out is higher pharmaceutical education. He hopes by raising the standard to lessen the number of pharmacists as fewer young men will be able to prosecute the study of pharmacy. He expects that when pharmacy has a standard of education equal to that of the higher university degrees, pharmacists will be able to demand more direct representation in the councils of the nation, and no longer have to fight for their rights, as now, at long range. Pharmacy at present is only represented as a subordinate branch of medicine and the

inspection and control of pharmacies and pharmaceutical affairs is primarily in the hands of medical officers. He wants this all changed and can only hope to have it done when the education of the pharmacist is equal to that of the doctor. Until they can claim equality they cannot hope to demand equal representation. He thus indirectly appeals for the subordination of practical experience that has done so much for German pharmacy in the past, to theoretical training that he deems, in the present emergency, more politic. In France where pharmacy is free they are clamoring for more of the apprentice system and better control of the same. In Germany these ultra-educationalists by implication propose to reverse this for their own convenience without regard or thought as to its effect on the men themselves. The ideal pharmacy aimed at for the future and for which the proposed university training is to fit them, will cease to be a pharmacy as we understand it and become a hygienic institute where the quality of medicine and the quality of food shall be determined, where toxines shall be prepared, and where such work as bacteriological laboratories and health boards now do shall be executed. To gain this sublime altitude, pharmacists must reach the degree of doctor of science, doctor of philosophy or the equivalent of one of these. This means a life training in school, college and university until full manhood before entering the drug store at all. Where the drug business is conducted on a commercial basis, such a dream is wholly Utopian; for such institutions as they propose transmuting their pharmacies into, it is a necessity. American pharmacy would need to pass through a whirlwind of revolutions before any such schemes could hope to receive a moment's candid consideration.

As there is neither counter prescribing nor doctor dispensing in Germany, the relationship of medicine with pharmacy is rarely strained. No doctor is permitted to have a Hausapotheke unless the nearest store is over three miles from him. He must have all his orders filled by an apothecary. This will naturally restrain him from acquiring the tablet triturate habit. In Berlin it was said that foreign doctors at the hotels sometimes exhibited symptoms of this habit, but it has as yet shown no tendency toward attacking the native physicians.

There are proprietary goods there as here, and physicians frequently prescribe them, much to the dislike of the apothecary, who objects to having his shelves covered with unsalable remnants. These goods are extensively dealt in by the druggeries or direct competitors of the pharmacies. Their sale has been growing for years, and has been quite a source of profit to the merchant druggists. The latter not only sell patent medicines, but supply all sorts of domestic medicines. Even poisons can be sold by them providing they are to be used for mechanical or chemical purposes. They cannot keep or sell articles exclusively used in prescriptions.

The new synthetic remedies are gaining headway in the large cities, but in small places and in the country they are less frequently heard from. Phenacetin, antipyrin, sulphonal and other popular ones have very properly gained admission to the Pharmacopoeia. Secret preparations are positively forbidden. The composition of every remedy must be known or it cannot be sold.

The advertising by newspapers of proprietary remedies is forbidden. Non-secret ones are permitted to be advertised by circulars, but on no account must misrepresentation as to their curative power be made where proof to the contrary or strong presumption is against this. If the first cost of the ingredients is a trifling amount and a large price is charged for it, the police and boards of health take pains to expose the extortion. They must not contain any potent drug like chloral, chloroform, morphine, or strychnine.

Doctors are not permitted to write cipher prescriptions so as to divert their trade to a particular store. To attempt to do so would lay the doctor liable to punishment. To receive a commission on prescriptions is also illegal, but Dame Rumor says that sometimes it is done. No authentic evidence of any such case is known. Doc

tors sometimes do tell patients not to patronize some particular druggist, but this is usually the outgrowth of a personal quarrel. Then it is equally common for the druggist to refuse to compound any prescription written by that doctor. Quarrels of this kind are rare. A much more serious source of disturbance to the even flow of good feeling among pharmacists is that which exists between those of Alsace-Lorraine and the rest of Germany. The pharmacists of Alsace-Lorraine will not, as a rule, affiliate with the pharmacists of the empire. Only the true German stock of the region can be persuaded to unite with the German Apothecaries Association. They would like to unite with the French pharmacists but cannot. Besides this national grievance, which is a remnant of the late Franco-Prussian war, they think that the German government does not treat them fairly in compelling them to take the maximum rates fixed by the crown for prescriptions for the rest of Germany. Coming as they did from French free pharmacy they have a much smaller population for each store and they pay more for help. They think they should be permitted to ask about two-fifths more than Berlin apothecaries. Druggists Circular.

A little reflection will convince one, if it be not already evident, that medicines intended for use in the eye require special preparation. Few have escaped the experience of a cinder or other foreign body in the conjunctival sac, and, judging from the pain and inflammation attendant upon such an accident, it is easy to appreciate the truth of the foregoing statement. Then, too, the cornea is a tissue whose nutrition is maintained in a roundabout manner, so that if its epithelial covering suffer an injury way is open to its invasion by microorganisms, and perhaps at no other point is the economy less prepared to cope with such a foe.

Without attempting any minute classification of eyemedicines, we may, for the sake of convenience, include them under three broad divisions, viz.: solids, semisolids, and liquids.

In our first class are found the various powders such as calomel, boric acid, etc. Since we usually expect a certain amount of reaction to follow their instillation into the eye, no particular attention is paid to the fact,

* See editorial, "Care in Dispensing Eye-Medicines."

and even if the eye suffer undue redness afterwards the quality of the drug employed is seldom questioned. But when we consider the many accidental impurities such powders may contain, such as, for instance, calomel, in which there is a considerable amount of corrosive sublimate, not to speak of the various intentional impurities used to adulterate them, I think you will all agree as to the importance of an investigation into their purity before applying them to an already inflamed eye.

In our second class belong the various ointments which have so wide a range of application both in the eye and about the lids. Of these I shall speak of but one in particular, viz., the yellow oxide of mercury, though there are many others likely to possess equally bad or even worse properties when improperly prepared. The yellow-oxide-of-mercury ointment probably has a wider use and abuse about the eye than all the rest combined. It is not the province of this article to discuss its therapeutic abuses, but its pharmaceutical are many and call for critical condemnation. To prove the truth of this assertion, obtain a sample of the ointment as ordinarily prepared, and, having spread a bit of it evenly

upon a clean glass slide, examine with a low-power lens. In many cases you will see in your microscopic field what strongly resembles a newly turned piece of New England soil, rocks and all, instead of a smooth homogeneous layer of a yellow color.

The yellow oxide is said to be a perfectly impalpable powder, and no doubt such is the case when it is pure; but adulteration is common, and, as the adulterant used is not always of the same impalpable nature as the yellow oxide itself, to say nothing of other irritating qualities it may possess, we have in such impure drug a power for evil which may more than counteract all the good effects expected.

Granting that the oxide is always pure, great care must be exercised in making an ointment from it, else large lumps of the pure powder will be found here and there throughout the mass, thus bringing the agent in an undiluted state into direct contact with the eye. Probably every oculist has noticed that certain of his cases using this ointment progressed favorably to a certain point, and there improvement seemed to come to a standstill. I believe if he will take the trouble in such cases to investigate matters he will find in the ointment, many times, the explanation of the halt in progress; for this ointment, however well prepared, does not keep well. Its rapid deterioration was formerly attributed to a chemical reaction between the mercurial salt and the base used, but recent investigation has shown that sunlight is the agent responsible for the destruction. Though this change be a harmless one so far as injuring the eye is concerned, it is plain that the therapeutic value of the ointment is lessened in proportion to such change and the eye is not getting what it needs. Therefore the proper method to observe when using this ointment is to prescribe but a small quantity at one time, and demand that it be dispensed in wholly opaque jars to protect it from the light. This rule also holds with other ointments, for they all suffer change to a greater or less extent upon standing; especially is this true of all in the mercurial class.

In our third class belong the eye-waters and various alkaloidal solutions such as atropine, eserine, cocaine, etc.; and here it is that the lack of pharmaceutical skill is most often displayed. Who has not prescribed something like the following and been disgusted at the unsightly mixture which confronted him when he went to use it:

ginning has been made towards insuring the permanency of a solution; and to prevent its subsequent early deterioration, care should be used to keep it pure and protected from the destructive influences of heat and light. A solution which is chemically perfect at first will not long remain so unless it is kept free from bacteria and decomposing organic matter. Purity of solution is highly essential to permanency. The effects of heat and light may be overcome, the former by keeping in a cool place, the latter by using an opaque receptacle.

Of first importance in obtaining a pure solution is pure water. Not spring water, rain water, or boiled water -but distilled water. What the word "distilled" may mean to some druggists it is difficult to say, for it is common practice with them to dispense recipes calling for "aqua destillata "with tap water or, at most, water which has been filtered, imagining that the filtering renders it absolutely pure. A few years ago a canvass was made among the drug stores of one of the leading cities of New England, to determine which ones, if any, were using distilled water in filling eye-prescriptions calling for that article. Anomalous as it may seem, in no instance was distilled water to be had when desired alone, but when called for with other things in a prescription it was readily obtained.

What are the advantages of distilled water over all other forms in preparing pure and permanent solutions? The answer is, greater solvent power; elimination of inorganic substances which tend to form chemical reactions with medicinal agents in the prescription; freedom from irritating gases, decomposing organic matter, and bacteria which are prone to hasten decomposition.

Rain water collected in the open country away from the contaminating influence of industrial processes and poisonous gases emanating from the haunts of man, would answer very well, but such water is difficult to procure, and when obtained is even then inferior to distilled water.

Other natural waters contain substances either organic, inorganic, or both, varying in kind and amount with the region from which the sample is taken. Now, when medicinal substances are added to such waters, incompatibility begins, the ingredient of therapeutic importance is destroyed, and an irritating precipitate is thrown down. The precipitate may not appear for several days, and thus the pharmacist is deceived in believing that his solution is all right, but decomposition sets in sooner or later, and the result is a sediment which diffuses itself throughout the whole body of solution every time the dropper is used, rendering it wholly unfit for application to an inflamed eye.

A drug of great service in many forms of conjunctivitis is tannic acid, but, from a lack of observation of its incompatibilities, most loathsome concoctions have emanated from the dispensing-counter. The following: