Pharmacy is a profession of the highest order, a sort of composite type, requiring the manipulative skill of the mechanic with the technical knowledge of the professional man, and demanding above all other professions at all times a clear head and an immediate and scrupulous knowledge of your subject. There is no profession where demands are so exacting and mistakes more consequential.
Still you have seen your profession tossed and buffeted about like a ship on a stormy sea. You have had your honesty questioned by a certain class of physicians when it suited their purpose; you have been called substitutors in patent medicine literature and advertisements; you have stood endless vilification from one source or another and retained a calm, dispassionate silence, an indifference so intense as to become startling in its apparent acquiescence.
Can you blame the public for believing some of the things said about you when not so much as a word of defense or a syllable of protest is offered in rebuttal?
As individuals you can protect yourself but feebly and accomplish but little; united you must be a power. Every one of you wields an influence, great or small, that in the aggregate will well be worth catering to, if you work as a unit. You have it within your power to do much of mutual benefit if, as a body, you work toward a common goal. Decide in meetings on that which is best; start with a thorough plan; play politics, if necessary, but that politics that knows no party but the one that is willing to prove your friend and help you realize your needs. All the resolutions passed, all the enthusiasm demonstrated in your meetings will amount to nothing and you will revert into a mutual admiration society unless followed up by every ounce of alertness, activity and aggressiveness that your various committees and your massed membership can summon to their aid. Yours is a worthy cause; one that demands justice and equity, and in all fairness to yourselves, you want to enter it with that energy that brings success. You can remain passive no longer; you must be up and doing and your rights cannot be denied you if your demands are honorable, just and consistent, and I am sure they will be.
Every letter, magazine article and trade journal containing short essays from druggists scattered the length and breadth of this great land of ours sound the same note, strike the same chord, and are united in one grand chorus of perfect harmony the summary of whose song is “Corrective Laws and Unity.”
Our great trouble seems to be that we lack union and concerted action on important matters. Laws are enacted and enforced by every line of tradesmen, mechanics, professional men, and even laborers, protecting their individual interests, and which we all must live up to, whether we consider them fair or unfair.
Your plumbing must be done by none, however skilled, but a registered plumber, and the law is positive. Arguments before your law courts can be conducted by no one, no matter how able, unless he be a registered lawyer, and the law is definite. No one dares to practice medicine who is unregistered, and the law is explicit, but where do the rights of the pharmacist begin and where do they end? The unrestrained and indiscriminate sale of medicines by department stores, the corner grocery, patent medicine shops and what not, whose proprietors are not only unregistered, but whose only knowledge is to handle it like the rest of the merchandise they sell, without any restriction, makes us feel like we wasted time in becoming registered at all.
Is antikamnia more potent when dispensed as a prescription than antikamnia sold in 25-cent boxes by department stores?
Does paregoric sold on a doctor’s prescription require greater technical skill in handling than that sold in 5-cent and 10-cent bottles at the corner grocery?
Does the strength, purity or therapeutic value of tablets of asperin, calomel or pills of quinine dispensed by the druggist on prescription vary from those peddled by the dry goods stores in 100 lots?