Year: 1874

We confess our ignorance of the ways
of the world. AT least that part of the
world that buys its Intoxicating drink at
the druggists; and the druggists who sell
liquors to be drank as beverage, were
wholly unknown to US, even by reputa-
ton, until this revival of temperance
brought them before the public gaze.
Now the discovery is made that in many
drug stores these liquors are sold with
out disguise, and in many more they are
sold privately, but with all the full
knowledge of the fact on the part of the
venders, that the liquors are not to be
used for medicinal purposes.


There is double distilled wrong about
this. 1t strikes US as being an aggravated
case of iniquity that deserves to be speci-
ally condemned.


When policemen become murderers, as
they do so frequently in this unfor-
tunately governed town of ours, the
community feels the double shame of the
crime committed by the men who are
set to protect the lives of those whom
they destroy. The public cry out against
it, as a monstrous evil, than which it is
next to impossible to conceive of any
thing indicative of a more terrible de-
pravity of public morals. And here is
the prostitution of drug stores to the use
of dram drinkers, we have something of
the same sort under very different
name 1t has long been known and re-
gretted, that the opium eaters of our
country, especially the women who are
such great consumers of the destroying
drug, are always and easily supplied with
the baleful poison at the same shop
where they would go, by the advice of a
physician, to obtain the medicine to
restore them to health, if diseased. And
this. is great evil. A conscientious
apothecary, knowing that a customer is
in the habit of using opium without and
perhaps against the physicians advice
should and would refuse to supply it.
Such refusal, with remonstrance and in
struction, may save the poor victim of
the habit; and if that is impossible, the
vender may escape the stings of con-
science and the divine displeasure which
his continued supply of the drug may
bring upon him. And this traffic in
opium, when it is sought as an intoxi-
cant, is wrong. morally wrong; and He
who seeth in secret and will call all men
to Judgment, will not hold him guiltless
who puts into the hands of a man or wo-
man, drug that is to be employed for
evil and evil only. 1t is wicked to sell
opium for such purposes.


But far more prevalent and injurious
traffic is that in Intoxicating drinks. We
are not indiscriminating in this sentence.
We recognize distinctly and fully the
right and proper use of them as we do of
all the poisons on the shelves and in the
drawers and jars of the apothecary. AL
cohol is not an evil. Arsenic is not an
evil. Opium is not an evil. NuX Vomica
is not an evil. The use of any one of
them may be evil, and the abuse of any
IF IS vii
very sure to be an evil, if used without
the advice of a discreet physician. In his
hands, alcohol and opium and arsenic
and nux vomica may be the salvation of
human life. We have the highest medi-
cal authority for giving strong drink in
certain cases, and we have as high au-
thority forbidding us to put the bottle to
neighbors lips, that is, to encourage him
to drink. And when good man is IL
censed by the State, or is encouraged by
the community to keep shop for the
sale of drugs and medicines, the pre-
sumption is that his business will be con-
Quoted to promote the health of the pub
lie. He is to sell healing remedies The
apothecary, like the physician whose aid
and ally he is regarded, has no more
right to distribute that which iniures the
community than the physician has to
prescribe what he knows will iniure his
patient, The doctor would be held to be
a monster who should feed his sick peo-
pie with poison, when they needed nu-
tritious food. And no less monster is
the druggist who becomes retailer of
Intoxicating liquors, and under the guise
of medicine, furnishes temptations to
men and women to become drunkards.
We look to them to guard the CON-
munity against the vice of drunkenness,
and if they use their shops and their rep
utation as cloaks to cover up secret
traffic in what they know to be destruc-
tive to the health Of their customers,