Druggists

The bright sign that druggists are scientists of sorts comes once a year-- when the American Pharmaceutical Association grants its Remington Medal for "distinguished service to pharmacy." Last week the association made its annual gesture. Medalist was Dr. (Phar. D.) Wilbur Lincoln Scoville, 64, chief of Parke, Davis & Co.'s analytical department since 1907, chairman of the committee of revision of the National Formulary, vice-chairman of the U. S. Pharmacopoeia./- Eight other men have received the Remington Medal, including Dean Henry Hurd Rusby of Columbia University (see p. 42), but not Dr. (Phar. D.) E. Fullerton Cook, chairman of the U. S. P.

The American Pharmaceutical Association nominally represents the 90,000 registered pharmacists in the U. S. By no means do all of these own their own drug stores. But at least one must be on duty all the hours during which each of the 57,000 U. S. pharmacies are open for business. For, although one Manhattan shop blatantly advertises that it fills no prescriptions, 30,000 of the 57,000 are still drugstores in the real sense.* Even Katz's in Kansas City, one of the biggest U. S. stores, with 50,000 separate items in stock, take pride in its accurate prescription work.* The expansion of such department drugstores and of the chains has led many a retail pharmacist to deal purely in drugs. Cleveland has Sherwood's; Manhattan, Timmermann's Apothecary; Baltimore, Hynson, Wescott & Dunning; Detroit, Seltzers; Atlanta, Marshall & Bell; San Francisco, Keck's Prescription Stores; Chicago, Wright & Lawrence. A development of the past few years is the prescription office, with its waiting room like a doctor's or dentist's. In small communities, despite the handiness of telephones and the ubiquity of physicians, the druggist still has his red and green gloves in his window, still has a bell button for emergency customers to wake him up in the middle of night for oil of cloves or paregoric.

/-The U. S. Pharmacopoeia (U.S.P. on drug labels) contains a list of accepted drugs and establishes standards for their strength and purity, with directions for making preparations (tinctures, extracts, powders, etc.). The first U.S.P. was compiled in 1820, the last (tenth) revision made in 1920. The National Formulary contains formulas approved by the American Pharmaceutical Association but not officially recognized by the U.S.P. Its first edition appeared in 1888, its last in 1926.

*Fifty-five colleges of pharmacy in the U. S. are recognized as good enough for membership in the Association of Colleges of Pharmacy; they teach materia medica; organic, qualitative, and quantitative analysis; botany; physiology. One or two teach bookkeeping and store management. Some seriously consider adding courses in lunch counter operation.

*The annual U. S. drugstore expenditure is $1,250,000,000. In city stores each person spends $14.91 yearly, each family $64.10; in rural stores each person $5.95, each family $25.57. Of the total, $125,000,000 (10%) is for prescriptions, $275,000,000 (22%) for proprietary medicines, $125,000,000 (10%) for toilet articles, $175,000,000 (14%) for sodas & candies, $100,000,000 (8%) for cigars, cigarets & tobacco, $450,000,000 (36%) for sundries.