lei 



i 



I 



PREFACE. xvii 



price — a plea which is much facilitated by the changes in 

 the names of the compositions, so that the articles asked for 

 by retail customers can seldom be legally considered as those 

 now ordered by the college ; or that in practising medicine 

 he conceives the alteration to be of advantage to his own patients ; 

 or that they are not designed for medical use, but for some 

 other purpose: hence the present mode of examination is of 

 necessity confined to asking for the articles used by him in 

 dispensing prescriptions; and this admits of an easy evasion, by 

 keeping a small stock of choice articles. This power of exa- 

 mining drugs, Sec. being lodged in the Society of Apothecaries, 

 has also excited much ill will among themselves : for, although 

 the real dispensers have no objection to any examination by 

 the College of Physicians, or would even court it, as being their 

 patrons; yet since some of the apothecaries have subscribed a 

 stock to supply the public with drugs, compounds, and even 

 lately to make up prescriptions, it has been suggested, that it 

 is contrary to the general principles of British legislation, that 

 fellow-tradesmen, and still less the stockholders of a corporation, 

 trading themselves on a common joint stock in any articles, 

 ould be constituted examiners of them when kept for sale by 

 thers, especially as it has been asserted that there is an inten- 

 tion to oblige all licensed apothecaries to purchase their medicines 

 at the Society's hall ; but this is said to be a mere surmise, the 

 iFbpring of the opposition with which the late Apothecaries' Act 

 as been received. 

 The original idea of this Act certainly arose from the ancient 

 and interminable dispute, respecting the comparative merit of a 

 public or private education — or, as applied to medicine, between 

 the methodics, who acquire their knowledge by attending the 

 public schools of medicine, and practise upon the general prin- 

 ciples there promulgated ; and the empirics, who acquire their 

 knowledge at home by the practical instruction of their parent, 

 a private master, or solitary study, in every case for a much 

 longer period than any apprenticeship, or course of academical 

 itudy. But the immediate origin of the Act was a meeting 



3. The Apothecary displayed; or, an Answer to the Apothecary's Pam- 

 phlet, called Frauds detected in Drugs; wherein his Profession and im- 

 portant Character is truly considered. 1748. 8vo. pp. 18. Extremely well 

 written. 



