Drugstore

“ This applies not only to the drug business, but to every line of trades or professions.
Our good old friend, the family doctor, has felt the effects of the surgeon, the specialist, the hospital, the dispensary.
[3]
Lawyers, the effect of the title guarantee companies and syndicated law.
The dry goods and notion business has been revolutionized into department stores.
The horse dealers, horseshoers and carriage builders must feel the introduction of the motor vehicle.
Laborers have felt the innovation of the steam shovel, etc. ”

“ A dealer has to buy them, whether times are good or bad. Folks must eat.”
“And take medicine?”
“Yes, and take medicine. And, by the way, do you know that the grocers are giving druggists a lively time on medicines? They are. Thurber has a drug department, and advertises them at 'a grocer's profit.' Lots of others have gone in, and the day will soon be here when a man can buy his sugar and quinine in the same place.”
“What will druggists do?”
“What have they been doing the last ten years? Sell teas and coffees, cigars and tobaccos, and fancy goods. ”

“ He must have two places in the shop, one most clean for physic, and the base place for chirurgic stuff. He is neither to increase nor to diminish the physician's prescription, he is neither to buy nor to sell rotten drugs. He is only to meddle in his own vocation; and to remember that his office is only to be the physician's cook.”
The drugs used by the physicians and apothecaries were purchased from the grossarii or sellers in gross, who were subsequently called grocers, some of whom specialized as druggists and others as chymists or chemists. ”

“ But I fail to see the connection between pharmacy and magazines, or stationery or candy. By selling these the druggist puts himself at once into competition with the department stores. There can be no doubt about who will win out [pg 238] in any such competition as that. But I believe there is still a place in the community for any special line of business if its proprietor sticks to his specialty and makes himself a recognized expert in it. The department store spreads itself too thin—there is no room for intensive development at any point of its vast expanse. ”

“ One old maid who ordered powder for her face, her ticket drew some worm lozengers, and she kicked awfully, and a widow who was going to be married, she ordered a celluloid comb and brush, and she got a nursing bottle with a rubber nozzle, and a toothing ring, and she made quite a fuss; but the woman who was weaning her baby and wanted the nursing bottle, she got the comb and brush and some blue pills, and she never made any fuss at all. It makes a good deal of difference, I notice, whether a person gets a better thing than they order or not. But the drug business is too lively for me. ”

“ Even then you will scarcely be able to satisfy yourself as to the nature of the commerce;—for they are selling gridirons and frying-pans in the dry goods stores, holy images and rosaries in the notion stores, sweet-cakes and confectionery in the crockery stores, coffee and stationery in the millinery stores, cigars and tobacco in the china stores, cravats and laces and ribbons in the jewellry stores, sugar and guava jelly in the tobacco stores! ”

“ Certain manufacturers of soaps, perfumes, and toilet goods have found it so difficult to place their products advantageously in drug stores and similar retail outlets because of the number of competing lines that they have found it advisable to sell, especially in country districts or small towns, direct to consumers by means of agents and canvassers working on a commission basis. ”

“ Many have arisen from penury to affluence, from obscurity to renown, in the drug trade of later years; but take away the tobacco trade, the soda fountain, and the outside patent nostrums, and wherein would the apothecary now differ from his predecessors?
“The Yankees bate the divil for swallowing drugs,” said an Irishman.
“A paddy will take nothing but castor oil,” replied the Yankee.
Yankee or Irish, English or Scotch, French or German, they all rush to the drug store for pills, for powder, for whiskey (?) , for tobacco, for patent medicines, and the druggists flourish. ”

“ Perhaps it is, by right of conquest, for the medical profession seems to be thoroughly subjugated. The distributor of drug samples is always working in the business interests of his firm and himself. How would it do to insist on payment for our time from the agents of some of our irresponsible, mushroom fake medicine factories?
There is another side to the picture. Drug manufacturers—even some of those engaged in the manufacture of quasi-proprietary medicines—have done much for pharmaceutic elegance and convenience. Many of our manufacturers are conscientiously proceeding along ethical lines. ”

“ The vice of any different principle may be known from its consequences. The drug store of today supplies many things besides medicines and surgical appliances. It has a counter where sandwiches and salads and ice cream and many other edibles are furnished to its customers. ”

“ The druggist is a wholesale dealer in drugs, which, in commerce, embrace not only articles used or recommended by the medical profession, but also spices, dye-stuffs, and paints. The commodities of his trade are obtained from almost every quarter of the globe; but especially from the countries bordering upon the Mediterranean Sea, and from the East Indies and Spanish America. ”

“ From the many years we have dealt in this class of supplies, we claim to be leaders in this branch of the drug trade, and by constantly replenishing and increasing our stock, and at once procuring or manufacturing all new chemical products, we are able to do full justice to all orders. ”

“ Every pharmacist has observed the greatly increased development of the commercial side of the drug business as compared with its scientific side, which rather seems to be accorded a secondary place in the conduct of its affairs, regardless of the fact that this feature is the one that gives it character, and the only one that distinguishes it from ordinary merchandising. ”

“ WHOLESALER- The term `wholesaler' means a drug wholesaler that is engaged in wholesale distribution of prescription drugs to retail community pharmacies, including (but not limited to) manufacturers, repackers, distributors, own-label distributors, private-label distributors, jobbers, brokers, warehouses (including manufacturer's and distributor's warehouses, chain drug warehouses, and wholesale drug warehouses) independent wholesale drug traders, and retail community pharmacies that conduct wholesale distributions.'. ”

“ There is no chemist's shop in the place, not even the humblest drug-store, where you can procure a pennyworth of boric acid or court-plaster. So they live on, indulging all the time in a luxury of lamentation. ”

“ He climbed into the car and I phoned the desk from a drug store in the neighboring community of Valley Center, N.J. The store was doing a thriving business in Sunday papers, ice-cream sodas, hot coffee, cigarettes and other typical druggist's goods. ”

“ When an article was wanted, it generally had to be hunted for, unless it chanced to fall under the immediate range of vision of salesman or customer, while the crowded shelves and counters presented a bewildering array of tinware, glassware, patent medicines, clocks, trimmed hats, churns, gaudy neckwear, cheap clothing, mock jewelry, hair-oils and colored perfumes put up in glass bottles of seductive shapes, along with sundry articles great and small necessary to the needs and adornment of the people of the surrounding country. ”

“ In the chemical factories every drug required by the Medical Pharmacopoeia and every chemical required in the arts and manufactures was made, but no drugs were sold except on a medical prescription, or chemicals except to responsible parties. ”

“ The profits to be made by a pharmaceutical house from the sale of a staple drug—a pharmacopeial, National Formulary, or nonproprietary preparation—which enters into free competition with other drugs of the same kind, are moderate; the profits to be made from the sale of a proprietary medicine on which the manufacturer holds a monopoly are usually large—sometimes enormous. ”

“ A certain hardware dealer in Albany, with whom I had become acquainted, proposed to buy one of my recipes, and to go into an extensive manufacture of the medicine. He had read and heard of the fortunes that had been made in patent medicines, by those who understand the business, and he thought he would see if he could not get rich in a year or less in the same way. ”

“ To this day pills are made behind its tall prescription desk—pills rolled out on its own pill-tile, divided with a spatula, rolled with the finger and thumb, dusted with calcined magnesia and delivered in little round pasteboard pill-boxes. The store is on a corner about which coveys of ragged-plumed, hilarious children play and become candidates for the cough drops and soothing syrups that wait for them inside. ”

“ THE LOVE-PHILTRE OF IKEY SCHOENSTEIN
The Blue Light Drug Store is downtown, between the Bowery and First Avenue, where the distance between the two streets is the shortest. The Blue Light does not consider that pharmacy is a thing of bric-a-brac, scent and ice-cream soda. If you ask it for pain-killer it will not give you a bonbon.
The Blue Light scorns the labour-saving arts of modern pharmacy. ”

“ After I had sold the last bottle I would clear my throat and say:
“Now, gentlemen, before distributing this pie, which, I admit, is largely intended to advertise the most successful remedy ever placed on the market, I wish to make a few closing remarks about my business.
“We are selling this medicine strictly on its merits, which we consider unsurpassed. If there is any man in this crowd who has purchased for any other reason than for its actual merits, I want that man to step right up here and get his money back. ”

“ I would, therefore, recommend that but one person, and that person a physician, be authorized to import or manufacture a sufficient quantity to supply the wants of the community for medicinal purposes; to dispose of no liquor except when he knows it to be necessary, or on an order from a regular physician, stating that the person applying stands in need of it for medicinal purposes; and to physicians to be used in their practice; the person so empowered to import, manufacture, and sell, to keep a record of the quantity manufactured or imported ”

“ At the time of the passage of the act, appellant was empowered to own and conduct and owned and thereafter continued to own and operate a number of pharmacies or drug stores at various places within the latter state. After the passage of the act, appellant purchased and took possession of two additional drug stores in that state and carried on and continues and intends to continue a carry on a retail drug business therein under the title of 'drug store' or 'pharmacy,' including the compounding, dispensing, preparation and sale at retail of drugs, medicines, etc. ”

“ Indeed, it is a pretty well stocked drug store that has more different chemicals in it than a man and his horse, and his dog, and the garden that he works in, all together, manufacture every day of their lives. ”

“ In the United States, dealers of this class are denominated importing and exporting merchants; or simply, importers and exporters.
2. Such merchants, both here and in Europe, are distinguished from each other by the kind of goods in which they traffic, or by the foreign country in which they have their chief correspondence; thus, one who deals in tobacco is called a tobacco-merchant; a [188] wholesale dealer in wines is called a wine-merchant; a West India, East India, or Turkey merchant, exports goods to, and imports goods from, those respective countries. ”

“ But, to the amazement of everybody, a few days afterward, he, at least what seemed to be himself, appeared in the shop, where he would sit himself down, and sometimes walk, and take from the shelves boxes, pots, and glasses, and set them again in other places; sometimes try and examine the goodness of the medicines, weigh them with the scales, pound the drugs with a mighty noise—nay, serve the people that came with bills to the shop, take their money and lay it up in the counter: in a word, do all things that a journeyman in such cases used to do. ”

“ MANUFACTURER.—The term ‘manufacturer’ means any entity which is engaged in the production, preparation, propagation, compounding, conversion, or processing of prescription drug products, either directly or indirectly by extraction from substances of natural origin, or independently by means of chemical synthesis, or by a combination of extraction and chemical synthesis. ”

“ Hash is fattening, the potatoes in it does it. Porter is fattening, the malt in it does it. Them and my tablets together will do the business—seventeen tablets a day—dollar a bottle, thirty-four in a bottle. Five tablets before breakfast, and for breakfast hash and two bottles of porter. Dinner the same; supper the same. Anything else you want eat or drink all day long. Last two tablets just before you go to bed. Get your prescriptions filled here. Get your porter over at Johnson's wholesale grocery, I've made an arrangement with him. Ten dollars. Report weekly. ”

“ Whenever a customer enters the shop, if he desire a box of pills, he receives with them an equal number of hard, round, dry jokes,—or if a dose of salts, it is mingled with a portion of the salt of Attica,—or if some hot, Oriental drug, it is accompanied by a racy word or two that tingle on the mental palate,—all without the least additional cost. ”

“ This old store is one o' the places that ain't changed in my memory. 'Stablished in 1847, and I don't reckon it's had a right good cleanin' from that day to this, but the best of everything a drug-store keeps is in them old dusty bottles and jars. It does me good to come to town and find one place lookin' jest like it did when me and Abram used to come on county-court days and circus days. And there's the old men sittin' around that stove. They've been there for the last twenty-five years, and they'll be there till death comes along and picks 'em up and carries 'em away. ”