XX PREFACE. 



Act, which extended their authority over the whole kino^doni ; 

 but as the governors are mostly lecturers in the hospitals, these 

 must have been interested against the formation of a rival school ; 

 especially as this being connected with the examining body, must 

 naturally have been preferred by the students : while the public 

 could not but be alarmed at the encouragement given to that 

 hateful class, common informers, and the inquisitorial idea of 

 refusing an annual license, on the ground of such an undefinable 

 thing as moral character, by which a person who had spent his 

 life in the profession might have been ruined in his old age, upon 

 some pique taken against him by the committee. Even the 

 country committees could not be well pleased with their great 

 subjection to the London superintending body. 



In consequence of the opposition experienced in respect to 

 this bill, it was amended, and much art was certainly dis- 

 played in attempting to interest all the opposing parties, except 

 those who were in fact the two parties against which it was 

 originally levelled, namely, the female mid wives and the che- 

 mists and druggists"'; although, from the language held out 

 to the public in general, they were led to suppose it was intended 

 a-^aiiist advertising quacks and nostrum-mongers. An attempt 

 was made to interest the government in the bill, by offering that 

 the indentures of apprenticeship should have a stamp of 2oZ. on 

 them ; and if the party had not served an apprenticeship by in- 

 denture, that his certificate of examination should bear the same 

 stamp : a proceeding singularly at variance with the preamble of 

 the bill, which stated, that in the present depressed state of medi- 

 cine, the apothecaries and surgeon-apothecaries could not obtain 

 a sufficient number of apprentices to supply his Majesty's naval 

 and military services with medical practitioners. And, aware of 

 the influence of the female sex, their interest was attempted to be 



* The English apothecaries are desirous of securing to themselves the 

 dispensing of physicians' prescriptions, as being a very profitable branch of 

 their business, and thus to restrain the chemist and druggist to the retailing 

 of simple articles only. It is singular, that in Paris, although a similar dif- 

 ference between these two branches of the profession exists, yet the circum- 

 stances are entirely reversed. There the chemist and drug;:ist (apothecaries) 

 complain of the dispensing practitioners (herbaliste?) selhng the ]>reparations 

 of the Codex, making up prescriptions, and even visiting the sick, which is 

 rigorously forbidden to the French apoticaire; but for which the herbahstc 

 gets a licence, by aiiending the schools of medicine, and undergoing an 

 examination. 



