value.  This enormous profit has called into existence a multitude of competitors; and in this instance the impossibility of verifying has, in a great measure, counteracted the beneficial effects of competition.  The general adulteration of drugs, even at the extremely high price at which they are retailed as medicine, enables those who are supposed to sell them in an unadulterated state to make large profits, whilst the same evil frequently disappoints the expectation, and defeats the skill, of the most eminent physician.

It is difficult to point out a remedy for this evil without suggesting an almost total change in the system of medical practice.  If the apothecary were to charge for his visits, and to reduce his medicines to one-fourth or one-fifth of their present price, he would still have an interest in procuring the best drugs, for the sake of his own reputation or skill.  Or if the medical attendant, who is paid more highly for his time, were to have several pupils, he might himself supply the medicines without a specific charge, and his pupils would derive improvement from compounding them, as well as from examining the purity of the drugs he would purchase.  The public would gain several advantages by this arrangement.  In the first place, it would be greatly for the interest of the medical practitioner to have the best drugs; it would be in his interest also not to give more physic than needful; and it would enable him, through some of his more advanced pupils, to watch more frequently the changes of any malady.

190.  There are many articles of hardware which it is impossible for the purchaser to verify at the time of purchase, or even afterwards, without defacing them.  Plated harness and coach furniture may be adduced as examples:  these are usually of wrought iron covered with silver, owing their strength to the one and a certain degree of permanent beauty to the other metal.  Both qualities are, occasionally, much impaired by substituting cast-for wrought-iron, and by plating with soft solder (tin and lead) instead of with hard solder (silver and brass).  The loss of strength is the greatest evil in this case; for cast iron, though made for this purpose more tough than usual by careful annealing, is still much weaker than wrought-iron, and serious accidents often arise from harness giving way.  In plating with soft solder, a very thin plate of silver is made to cover the iron, but it is easily detached, particularly by a low degree of heat.  Hard soldering gives a better coat of silver, which is very firmly attached, and is not easily injured unless by a very high degree of heat.  The inferior can be made to look nearly as well as the better article, and the purchaser can scarcely discover the difference without cutting into it.