1846.] State of Pharmacy in Mexico. 327 



cution against quacks and unlicensed vendors of medicines of 

 every description, who are to be rigidly prosecuted, and, in case 

 of conviction, punished with fines, banishment, or imprisonment 

 with hard labor;* lastly, in sending in monthly repoits of the 

 state of health of the previous month to the government, the re- 

 ports being themselves founded on the observations and notes to 

 be forwarded by all medical men in actual practice to the Pro- 

 tomedicat on the subject. 



The medical men are arranged under the usual heads of phy- 

 sicians and surgeons, (the two classes being rigidly distinct,) 

 accoucheurs and apothecaries. 



Physicians must be graduated doctors of medicine, but before 

 they are permitted to practice, they must pass an examination 

 (state examination) before the protomedicat. If they are found 

 duly qualified, they are bound by their oath to act in every case 

 according to the best of their abilities and their consciences; to 

 abstain from the performance of all surgical operations, unless 

 they have passed the examination in surgery and not to prepare 

 or dispense! medicines, much less to keep an apothecary shop; 

 further, not to take their own relations — even the most distant — 

 under their treatment; to attend the poor gratis; to be content 

 with moderate remuneration from the rich; and lastly, to promote 

 the fulfilment of all religious duties on the bed of sickness and 

 death, or they subject themselves to a fine of 10,000 maravedis 

 (about $32) for each case, in which one of their patients, by 

 their neglect, dies without having received the sacrament. The 

 law holds them, moreover, responsible for every culpable neglect 

 of the duties of their profession. 



The apothecaries are, in the first place by law, subjected to a 

 rigid examination, and then to a periodical visitation of their 

 shops, beyond the precincts of which no medicines are allowed to 

 be prepared. 



They are bound to reject all prescriptions not signed by a legal 

 practitioner, to abstain from all medical and surgical practice, 

 and never to quit their shops without leaving an approved and 

 duly qualified substitute. 



All their assistants must be acquainted with Latin, and capable 

 of compounding medicines accurately and quickly, according to 

 prescription and the directions of the Spanish Pharmacopoeia. 

 No one is permitted to open a shop or to take one, in a place 

 where his father or father-in-law, son or son-in-law, are estab- 

 lished in medical or surgical practice. — C/iem. Gazette. 



* A plan which would answer very well in all other countries. 

 t Then there are no dispensaries in Mexico ! Happy land. 



