What Can We Do in Our Locality to Acquaint the Public with the Service Pharmacy Renders

The value of the service rendered to the public by the pharmacist is recognized today to a far greater extent than ever before. This is an important sign of progress, but there is still much to be done to impress the significance of this service upon the popular mind and to disabuse people of erroneous ideas of pharmacies and their place in the economy of things. Charters has said, "A well-informed pharmacist is the best single individual to disseminate information about public health." This is undoubtedly true and few people realize how much information is furnished and how much assistance is rendered by the pharmacist without any charge whatsoever. While the physician deals with individual cases of illness, prescribing for and treating the patients, the drug store serves as a kind of clearing house for general information on health, aside from being the source of supply from which not only medicines are obtained, but also, sanitary and toilet goods and many other closely related articles. It is our duty to stress constantly the added dignity and usefulness of the pharmacy in the present scheme of things. This is already recognized to a considerable extent, but should be recognized still more. Pharmacists themselves can assist materially in getting such recognition. This can be done in conversations, with customers and personal acquaintances, in well-phrased advertising, and in the attitude of the clerks and other employees of drug stores. It needs no elaboration to show the contrast between the drug store of a few decades ago, limited to the sale of old time remedies, for the most part, and often dingy and uninviting in appearance, and the modern, attractive pharmacy with its astonishingly wide range of merchandise. The present pharmacy, besides being a public health agency, is also a public institution as indispensable as the fire department and the public school, the chief distinction being that it is privately owned and managed. In fact, the clients or patients of the pharmacy far outnumber those who utilize the services of the public school or the fire department. As a matter of fact, everybody or nearly everybody patronizes the pharmacy at one time or another, and a large share of people do so almost daily. Sometimes reference is made in a humorous vein to the fact that the modern pharmacy is virtually a department store, because it sells nearly everything. This, of course, is no reflection on the pharmacy. On the contrary, it is evidence of the key position that the pharmacy occupies in modern life. Just because it occupies that position, it has so rapidly become the place where one can buy such a large variety of useful goods. When the matter is considered carefully, it will be found that a great proportion of the commodities on sale in drug stores are related directly or indirectly to health--therefore, they are on sale in the logical place. Toothbrushes, toothpaste and powder, safety razors and blades, shaving cream and soap, talcum powder, perfume, toilet water, nail files and clippers, electric heaters, and electric fans--these are just a few of the multitude of things I might enumerate which are found in pharmacies as a rule and all of which, on reflection, have a distinct bearing on the matter of health. They are not drugs, to be sure, but they are certainly factors in keeping people clean and well and comfortable. A survey of the merchandise of average pharmacies will reveal that this principle holds true for the most part. And where articles on sale have little or no connection with health in any way, it must be remembered that it is the natural and proper policy to sell anything in common use which can be exhibited and sold conveniently in such a store, simply because the drug store is the one place visited by almost everyone in the neighborhood, sooner or later. In this respect, it is distinct from the clothing store, the shoe shop, the restaurant, the tailor shop, etc. …