156 



THE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



macy.and I propose to extend my remarks 

 to revealing short comings in the practice 

 of Medicine. 



L,et us turn first, however, to Phar- 

 macy, and ask the question whether if in 

 its own special domain its condition is 

 satisfactory, and if not, what is the cause 

 of this, and what suggestions for its im- 

 provement can be offered ? The Phar- 

 maceutical Society has had an existence 

 of more than fifty years, and we have had 

 a compulsory Act of Parliament for 

 twenty- six years. In that period advances 

 have been made which are obvious, 

 and I need not recount them any more 

 than I need place before your confirma- 

 tory evidence of the fact that the majority 

 of those who are on the Register of 

 Chemists and Druggists are dissatisfied 

 with the actual practice of Pharmacy to 

 day. Complaints are loud and deep 

 against the Pharmaceutical Society be- 

 cause it does not bring about an improved 

 condition of things, but in no case have 

 I seen the confession by any large section 

 of men on the Register that they have 

 failed to realize the privileged position 

 in which they were placed by the Act 

 of 1868, and that they have neglected to 

 conform to the keynote and true spirit of 

 that Act which was education. I 

 think you will agree with me that the 

 greatest evil from which Pharmacy is 

 suffering to-day — unbridled and dis- 

 honest competition in prices — is mainly 

 due to the enormous extent to which the 

 use of proprietary medicines have in- 

 creased, and to the fact that this has 

 played the role of introducing Grocers, 

 Limited Companies, and other unqualfied 

 and unregistered individuals and bodies 

 to assist in their distribution, and has 

 tempted them to add to their sale a large 

 number of the drugs in common use, and 

 finally, has envolved that monstrosity of 

 the nineteenth century, the "Company 

 Pharmacist. ' ' Who is to blame for this ? 

 Surely not the Pharmaceutical Society ; 

 for, whatever individuals may have done. 



the whole .spirit and teaching of the 

 Society is in direct opposition to Phar- 

 macists becoming the medium of dis- 

 tributing articles about which they have 

 absolutely no personal knowledge, and 

 about which they can give neither to 

 Physician nor to Patient any information 

 prising company, and is presented to him 

 with a sample bottle, a pamphlet bristling 

 based upon their scientific training and 

 experience as Pharmacists. No, it is 

 not the Pharmaceutical Society which is 

 to blame, but it is the men at the Register 

 who, in the past, in their several local- 

 ities, by their endorsement of the false- 

 hoods of these advertising quacks, have 

 created, on the part of the public, this 

 enormous and unhealthy demand for 

 proprietary medicines, and have brought 

 this Nemesis upon Pharmacy. 



Here I must mention a further de- 

 velopment of the proprietary medicine 

 system which has recently taken place, 

 and which is fraught with far more peril 

 to the existence of pharmacy than the 

 proprietaries for domestic use, and in this 

 both medicine and pharmacy have been 

 ensnared by the wily commercial ad- 

 venturer. In various guises, and by 

 persistently advertising claims to im- 

 provements in pharmacy, men seeking 

 gold, have induced medicine and phar- 

 macy to become their tools to enable 



them to reach the million. There are 

 two chief methods hy which this has been 

 accomplished, one is by the registration 

 of a word for some particular form in 

 which drugs may be administered, the 

 other is by the invention of names, 

 (" discretional names" I see one medical 

 writer euphemistically calls them,) which 

 are are used as blinds to suggest some 

 original or added virtue for compounds, 

 the properties of the ingredients of which 

 are perfectly well known. These enter- 

 prises would have met but with poor 

 success if medical men and the medical 

 journals had been true to themselves and 

 to their own teaching. 



To be continued.') 



