THE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



21 I 



a tradesman may sell his goods at the 

 hands of assistants, or through the agen- 

 cy of any number of intermediate per- 

 sons between himself and the user of the 

 article he sells. Apply this test to phar- 

 macy, and you will see it is impossible 

 for it to expand indefinitely in the ful- 

 filment of its own proper functions, of 

 dispensing the prescriptions which the 

 physician has written for the individual 

 patient, or prescribing for the smaller 

 accidents and ailments to which human 

 beings are liable. There will perhaps 

 spring into your minds instances of the 

 indefinite expansion which has followed 

 the advertising of nostrums, but that is 

 not pharmacy, but in many cases is 

 merely obtaining monej'' under false pre- 

 tences. You all know Jerome's friend 

 who visited the British Museum to read 

 up the treatment for hay fever, and plod- 

 ding conscientiously through the book 

 from A to Z, found that the only com- 

 plaint he had not got was " housemaid's 

 knee," and so it is with nostrums. The 

 complaint is more often than not sug- 

 gested by the literature of the nostrum- 

 monger before the nostrum effects the 

 wonderful cure which is recorded in the 

 testimonial. 



The essence of a profession, on the 

 other hand, is that the members of it re- 

 ceive a special education, and give evi- 

 dence before a legally constituted body 

 that they have been so educated, and 

 that the service rendered is personal and 

 direct, and cannot legitimately be multi- 

 plied indefinitely through the agency of 

 unqualified persons. 



Tried by these criteria I think you 

 will agree that pharmacy in the exercise 

 of its legitimate function towards the 

 public is a profession and not a trade. 

 Knglish people, through their legisla- 

 ture, admitted this in 1868, when by 

 statute they laid down the conditions 

 upon which pharmac}^ should be carried 



on, and imposed restrictions of a similar 

 kind to those which had before belonged 

 to the other professions, and which were 

 not and are not imposed upon any trade. 

 How does it happen that the very es- 

 sence of pharmacy being a profession, 

 that the Pharmaceutical Society and the 

 lyCgislature having decided, in effect, 

 that it is a profession, we seem as far off 

 as ever from its being practically recog- 

 nized as such by the pharmacist and the 

 public ? It is due to the excessive pre- 

 ponderance of the trade element and of 

 the commercial spirit among the regis- 

 tered men. 



This has handicapped the Pharma- 

 ceutical Society and rendered it impos- 

 sible for the Society to advance upon the 

 lines and in the spirit of the Pharmacy 

 Act. We have seen the kindred profes- 

 sion of medicine increase its curriculum 

 or period of compulsory training from 

 three to four years, and again to five 

 years, and in so doing it has steadily and 

 deservedly risen in public esteem and 

 respect, whilst notwithstanding the con- 

 victions and earnest desire of the Phar- 

 maceutical Society, we have as yet no 

 curriculum at all, and the voluntary 

 training (for our examination) which our 

 young men undergo in a vast majority 

 of the cases, cannot be described by any 

 less objectionable word than that of cram. 

 The consequence is that notwithstanding 

 that the English people were willing to 

 accept Pharmacy as, and to give it the 

 opportunities of, a profession in 1868, 

 they are almost compelled in 1894, by the 

 conduct of those who practice it, to come 

 to the decision that pharmacy is nothing 

 but a trade after all, and so it comes to 

 pass that the grocer and the company 

 pharmacist are so far on the road to win 

 the rights and the privileges which be- 

 long to pharmacy. Pharmacy as a trade 

 is a failure, and I go further and say 

 that pharmacy as well as medicine, con- 



