to his customers, as it is essential to the proper performance of his duty to safeguard the public health.

Aside from these reasons, however, the pharmacist should be a law-abiding citizen and endeavor to live up to the highest ideals of true citizenship. Recognizing this fact it is unfortunate that we can readily prove that the debasing influences that the average pharmacist has been, and is, subjecting himself to would appear to be directly responsible for his ignoring one of the best-known and most thoroughly well-established laws of our State, by selling many things that are not necessary on Sunday. The so-called blue law of this State has done much to give to the people of our city and of our State a generally accepted day for rest, and it is unfortunate indeed that we, as pharmacists, should not be willing to take advantage of the law to improve ourselves morally, physically and probably financially.

At the present time pharmacists, by taking advantage of an old tradition that gives them the privilege of keeping their shops open on Sundays, sell many things that are not directly in the line of medical supplies and thus take an unfair advantage of their competitors in other lines of trade. Practices of this kind tend to lose for us the respect of other trades-people in our neighborhood and not infrequently incur for us the ill-will and enmity of neighbors who should be our friends. There is an old saying that a man must respect himself before he can expect others to respect him. If the average pharmacist enjoyed the respect and esteem of his neighbors he would not be subjected to the many petty annoyances and impositions that are practised on him at the present time.

Shorter hours and Sunday rest would give the rank and file of pharmacy more time to study, and to broaden themselves mentally, and this would give them culture, which is so necessary for the proper development of a professional man.

Shorter hours would also enable pharmacists to realize the sad condition to which the practice of pharmacy has come, not only in our city and State but throughout the whole of this great nation. Such a realization would tend to make all of us do our own thinking and not allow the editors of pharmaceutical journals, controlled by manufacturing interests or patent-medicine houses, to do it for us. What the rank and file of pharmacists of this country need, and need badly, is the ability to do their own thinking. One of the most

important steps in this direction, it seems to me, is this very question of shorter hours.

Shorter hours will allow us to get out of the monotony of our present-day existence, will allow us time to interest ourselves in what is going on about us and will, above all, permit us to enlarge on our general fund of information and to increase our field of usefulness.

When we, as pharmacists, have arrived at this stage, then, and not until then, will pharmacy, true pharmacy, professional pharmacy rise to the high and exalted position that it should occupy in this great country.

PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE WITH SUNDAY CLOSING.

The difficulties in the way of closing drug stores wholly or in part on Sunday seem more imaginary than real-while local conditions and individual preferences must largely control, yet the fact remains that those who have adopted lesser hours on Sunday universally speak in favor of the plan. Their experience is that their business has been little-if any-perceptibly lessened when the year's business has been summed up. So that they are enthusiastic to continue the practice and to urge it upon their neighbors, because they are fully convinced that its benefits are far greater than the possible loss of a few sales of merchandise.

The most plausible argument used against lessened business hours on Sunday is that that asks "what are those who are taken suddenly and seriously ill to do if their wants cannot be supplied?" As a matter of fact the number who are suddenly and seriously taken ill during the few hours the store would be closed are remarkably few, and in these days when nearly all physicians carry pocket cases of medicines for immediate use, this argument loses much of its force.

It is often very hard to do things we are not anxious to do—and remarkably easy to do those things we want to do—and this applies to Sunday closing with as much force as it does in other matters.

After 35 years' experience with partially closing the store on Sunday I am decidedly in favor of continuing it. The only regret I have had is that I did not increase the number of hours closed. C. A. WEIDEMANN.

. Jour. Pharm

About twelve years ago we started to close on Sunday afternoon from one to six o'clock and have continuously been doing so ever since, and we know of no reason, either commercial or ethical, for changing back to the old plan. No trouble has been experienced with any of our customers, as they have always been perfectly fair in conceding that we had a perfect right to the day of rest just the same as they themselves demanded in their own right on their own behalf.

Leaving out of the question the advantages to be derived from the loyalty and earnestness stimulated in the employees of an establishment that always considers their interests as well as the purely commercial phases of a proposition in making rules for management, it is a fact that there has been no loss of business as a result.

It is very rarely that we are disturbed by the ringing of the night bell, and if this is ever done by any one without a real necessity for excuse, service is politely but firmly declined and the person invited to call during the hours set aside for business.

My opinion personally on this question in its relation to the drug business at large is that it will be decided according to the predilections and views of each individual proprietor, and after a few of those having the courage born of a conviction as to what is their just due have demonstrated the feasibility of the movement, it will come to be regarded as a matter of course and accepted as a necessity by the public generally and a large majority of pharmacists themselves.

W. L. CLIFFE.

The closing of drug stores on Sunday is a subject of vital interest. That there is an increasing sentiment in favor of a closed Sunday and shorter hours during the week is in line with genuine progress. Every druggist knows that Sunday customers and late customers are such largely through habit, and that genuine emergency cases are very rare, and, in nine cases out of ten, they occur because the drug stores are open waiting for just such trouble. The druggists of any city or town can educate the people in one month to buy their medicines and drug-store supplies on week-days and during proper hours. Were druggists to adhere more strictly to self-respecting business methods, including Sunday closing and shorter hours, they would be more respected by the people, would make fully as much money, enjoy

. Jour. Pharm

November

better health, live longer and be better citizens. Nor need it specially injure a druggist's business to close on Sunday even if his competitors keep open. By closing he and his clerks secure a needed rest and can do better work the rest of the week. By going to church his acquaintanceships are enlarged and forceful traits of character are formed which are of value to a business man. Real emergency cases belong to the doctor, and every doctor should be prepared to treat such without resorting to a drug store. The druggist who stands behind his counter fifteen hours every day in the year is either a slave or a martyr, but his sacrifice is not to science or to humanity, but is laid upon the altar of greed and mammon every time.

Vineland, N. J.

JOSEPH A. CONWELL.

The subject of shorter hours is one which I have been interested in for some time, and I am of the opinion that no two stores can be governed by the same rules. I endeavor to have each of my assistants in the store about 111⁄2 hours each day, and in order to do this, every alternate week two of them begin work at 7 o'clock in the morning, and continue until 9 o'clock at night; two others begin at 8 o'clock and are on duty until 10 o'clock, the closing hour. I am endeavoring to improve this by allowing the men who come at 7 o'clock quit work at 6.30 P.M., thus giving them the entire evening; and to have the other two come on at 8.30 A.M. and work until 10 o'clock.

I have tried the experiment of closing on Sundays between the hours of 1 and 5.30, and have frequently found on my return as many as five or six prescriptions which had been left for compounding and with notes attached, urging that they be sent at once. Inasmuch as

the distance they were to be sent was in some cases considerable, such an arrangement necessarily entails considerable inconvenience. On the whole I am an advocate of shorter hours and Sunday closing, and have for years been giving the matter consideration. THEODORE CAMPBELL.

Overbrook, Pa.

PHARMACEUTICAL MEETING.

The first of the pharmaceutical meetings of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, for the season of 1906-07, was held on the evening of Tuesday, October 16, 1906, as a joint meeting with the Philadelphia Branch of the American Pharmaceutical Association. One of the members present aptly paraphrased this meeting as having been helpful, hopeful and inspiring, and in doing so expressed the feelings of pretty much every retail pharmacist present. The meeting certainly was helpful in so far that the discussion which was elicited suggested ample ways and means for bringing about the objects most to be desired. The meeting was hopeful because it evidenced the well-known fact that American pharmacists are desirous of being classed as law-abiding citizens and are anxious to meet their obligations to the members of the community. Above all, however, this first pharmaceutical meeting was inspiring in that it fully demonstrated that pharmacy, in this as well as in other countries, is not devoid of votaries with force of character, willing to assert their rights, as they see them, and able to demand respect by respecting themselves.

While it is practically impossible to adequately portray the spirit that was evidenced at this meeting, some faint conception of the earnestness and ardor that were manifested in the course of the discussion may be gleaned from the following detailed report.

The meeting was called to order by Mr. Howard B. French, the president of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, who, after some few well chosen preliminary remarks, introduced Dr. Lawrence F. Flick, Director of the Phipps Institute, Philadelphia, who took as the direct object of his remarks, "Rest and Recreation as a Physical Necessity." Dr. Flick compared the human organism to a machine in that it possessed but limited qualities of endurance, and pointed out the need of remembering that certain mechanical, physiological, and chemical processes that are constantly going on in our bodies, and which are essential to sustain life, all consume energy.

He dwelt at some length on the necessity of keeping the human body in such a state of repair as to enable it to withstand the continuous attack of pathogenic micro-organisms and of other diseaseproducing factors. A machine is destroyed in proportion to the way it is used or abused, and the human organism may, in the same way,