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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 25, 1919. 



THE PROFESSION OF CHEMISTRY. 



The Profession of Chemistry. By Richard B. 

 Pilcher. Pp. xiv+199. (London: Constable 

 and Co., Ltd., 1919.) Price 65. 6d. net. 



THE late Sir Henry Roscoe, in his autobio- 

 graphy, relates that when he had made up 

 his mind to follow chemistry as a profession his 

 decision caused astonishment and even dismay 

 among- his friends and relations, who asked him 

 if he intended to open a shop with red and blue 

 glass bottles in the window. This, he added, was 

 not an extraordinary question in the early 'fifties. 

 Some persons would consider it as not more extra- 

 ordinary to-day. Fairly well informed people have 

 ffraduallv learned to understand that there is a 

 distinction between the professional chemist and 

 the pharmacist, but the general community still 

 regards the shopkeeper who dispenses medicines 

 and sells drugs and anything else that he thinks 

 may appeal to his clients as a chemist, because he 

 calls himself such. This needless confusion in 1 

 the public mind exists nowhere else in Europe, 

 and would not exist here if our Legislature and 

 the Public Departments concerned with the issue of 

 Royal charters, and, it may be added, our lay 

 Press, were better acquainted with the functions 

 and aims of the science of chemistry as distin- 

 guished from the art and craft of pharmacy. 



An eminent foreign physicist, passing through 

 one of our country towns in company with the 

 writer of this review, chanced to see, on the facia 

 of the local druggist, the term "Family Chemist," 

 whereat he was considerably astonished and per- 

 plexed. The appellation was wholly unintelligible 

 until it was suggested, as the only way of escape 

 from a laboured explanation, that it might pos- 

 sibly mean a "chemist with a family." As he 

 glanced in turn at the heterogeneous objects in 

 the window — the photographic appliances, hot- 

 water bottles, weed-killers, toilet soaps, electric 

 torches, safety razors, vanishing cream, egg- 

 preservatives, hair-brushes and sponges — and 

 commented on the character of the show-cards his 

 wonder grew. Why a man who dealt in such 

 articles should term himself a chemist was incom- 

 • prehensible to a fellow-countryman of Scheele, 

 who, by the way, always called himself an Apote- 

 kare; and, further, why the soi-disant chemist 

 should advertise himself for the purposes 

 of business as " a family man " was still more 

 inexplicable, unless, as was surmised, he con- 

 sidered it as some justification for his charges. 

 But he was evidently a man of enterprise, since, 

 in addition to his other activities, he traded in 

 spectacles and sheep-dips, sold British and foreign 

 wines, developed photographs, and was the local 

 agent of one of the smaller insurance companies. 



That the misunderstanding as to the true voca- 

 tion of a chemist is widespread is the common 

 experience of teachers when consulted by the 

 parents of boys who have developed a taste for 

 NO. 2617, VOL. 104] 



scientific chemistry. The "man in the street," 

 as a rule, has a very hazy idea of the department 

 of knowledge or of human activity with which 

 chemistry is concerned. He cannot be wholly 

 ignorant of its applications, but he seldom knows 

 them as such. Even generally well-informed 

 people are unaware what the profession of 

 chemistry comprehends. It is to meet this lack 

 of knowledge that the registrar and secretary of 

 the Institute of Chemistry has been induced to 

 put together this book. 



In a special chapter Mr. Pilcher deals with 

 the claim of pharmacists to the title "chemist," 

 and shows how it has arisen. They base it appar- 

 ently on the teaching of Paracelsus — no very 

 reputable authority — that "the true use of chem- 

 istry was not to make gold, but to prepare medi- 

 cines." But chemistry was studied, as an art, 

 long prior to the fifteenth century, and was applied 

 to industry and manufacture by the ancient 

 Egyptians and Far Eastern nations centuries 

 before the Christian era. Many of the earliest 

 chemists, it is true, were physicians, and prac- 

 tised their art, like Paracelsus, in connection with 

 their profession. But there was never any ex- 

 clusive association of chemistry with medicine, 

 and there is no justification, therefore, for the 

 vendors of drugs on this score to assume the title 

 of chemist. Strictly speaking, the pharmacists 

 are the direct descendants of the Apothecaries, 

 who in their turn were descended from the 

 thirteenth-century Spicers, who dealt in galenicals 

 — i.e. roots, herbs, and other vegetable products. 

 The .'\pothecaries gradually took upon themselves 

 the functions of the physicians, whilst the drug- 

 vendors usurped those of the Apothecaries in pre- 

 paring and compounding medicines. The Apothe- 

 caries were originally incorporated with the 

 grocers, and down to the beginning of the reign 

 of James I. such drugs and medicines as were 

 then in use were sold in common by the grocers. 

 In 1 617 the .\pothecaries obtained their charter, 

 which enacted that the grocers should no longer 

 keep an Apothecary's shop, and that no surgeon 

 should sell medicines. The Society of Apothecaries 

 then proceeded to take action against the frauds 

 and artifices of the grocers and drug-vendors, and 

 established a manufactory of medicinal prepara- 

 tions for the use of their own members. .Although 

 Robert Boyle drew a clear distinction in his writ- 

 ings between chemists and the druggists or drug- 

 sters, as he indifferently calls them, by the middle 

 of the eighteenth century the popular confusion 

 was such as to draw forth a protest from Berken- 

 hout, who complained that " persons, who know 

 nothing more of chemistry than the name, natur- 

 ally suppose it to be a trade exercised by shop- 

 keepers called Druggists and Chemists, who are 

 thought to be chiefly employed in preparing medi- 

 cines. . . . Chemistry, therefore, they imagine 

 belongs exclusively to physic." 



Space will not permit us to follow Mr. Pilcher's 

 historical account in further detail, but it is inter- 

 esting to note that it was only after the Chemical 

 Society was established in February, 1841, that 



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