at Apothecaries' Hall. 197 



and other preparations, are regularly presented at this committee, 

 and their qualities determined by inspection or experiment, when 

 any faulty articles are rejected or returned for amendment, while 

 those which are approved are entered as such, and ordered into the 

 shops and warehouses. 



The immediate business of the chemical laboratories as relates 

 to the processes, operations, and apparatus, are under the con- 

 trol and inspection of the superintending chemical operator ; and 

 of the chemical and galenical operators who reside at the hall ; and 

 these officers constantly attend the buying and inspecting com- 

 mittees, and such other meetings of the directors of the establish- 

 ment as may require their presence. 



If any explanation be necessary of the prices charged by the 

 Society of Apothecaries for their medicines, which are in some in- 

 stances higher than those usually affixed to the same articles, 

 even by respectable chemists and druggists, it will be only neces- 

 sary to observe that the mode in which the business is transacted 

 at Apothecaries' Hall, puts it out of their power to enter into com- 

 petition with those persons in that respect for the reasons which 

 follow : 



The society consider it their duty to countenance and support 

 the laudable designs of the Royal College of Physicians by adher- 

 ing strictly to the directions of the Pharmacopoeia in the prepara- 

 tion of medicines, both as to the quality of the ingredients and the 

 proportions in which they are employed. Moreover, their prac- 

 tice of purchasing none but select drugs, separated from those 

 parts which are of a damaged or inferior description, compels 

 them to give proportionably higher prices for them than are given 

 by the wholesale trader, who either imports his own drugs, or 

 purchases them in their original packages as imported, which he 

 afterwards garbles and divides according to their respective quali- 

 ties, and fixes his prices to the different purchasers accordingly. 



The medicinal compositions which are most liable to adultera- 

 tion, because the less easily detected, are extracts, confections, 

 and tinctures. The ingredients of whicli these are formed, arc 

 for the most part very expensive, such as, among many ethers* 



