34 
THE AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACY. 
being duly registered under this Act, shall assume or use the title of pharmaceutical 
chemist, pharmaceutist, chemist and druggist, dispensing chemist, or exhibit any 
name or title or sign implying that he is a person registered under this Act, or 
that he is a member of the said society, every such person shall be liable to a 
penalty of five pounds ” ! So much for the penalties for not being duly registered 
under “ The Pharmacy Act 1880 but so weak and inoperative has this clause 
been found to be that there are in this town at least ten pharmaceutical free 
lances. The Pharmacy Board of New Zealand, being fully conscious of the 
present laxity of the Act, caused to be drawn up and submitted to Parliament 
last session a bill intituled “ An Act to Amend the Pharmacy Act 1880,” which, 
among others, contained the following clauses : — 
“Any person not being a registered pharmaceutical chemist of New Zealand 
who carries on, or attempts to carry on, the business of a chemist and druggist, 
or a homoeopathic chemist, by keeping an open shop for the compounding and 
dispensing of the prescriptions of legally qualified practitioners, after thirty-first 
day of December, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-five, shall be liable to 
a penalty of not exceeding five pounds for each offence.” 
“No pharmaceutical chemist shall carry on business in more places than 
one, unless each additional place of business is placed under the personal 
management of a duly registered chemist, who shall give it the same attention 
as his principal is required to give to his head place of business, under a penalty 
of fifty pounds.” 
From these clauses it will be seen that our registered confreres are fully alive 
to the necessity of making the pharmaceutical calling one in which the public 
shall have some kind of guarantee that the dispenser of medicine shall have, at 
least, some rudimentary knowledge of his work. Yet, notwithstanding that 
regulations very much on the same lines are the law in most civilised communities, 
the New Zealand M.H.E.’s could not see their way to give such a bill their 
sanction. Perhaps it may be accounted for by the fact that our elected law-makers 
are too occupied quarrelling over “the loaves and fishes” for their respective 
constituencies. 
The last examination papers of the Pharmacy Board of Victoria have lately 
come to hand. The time allowed for the paper for the certificate of the College 
of Pharmacy in chemistry is two hours. It consists of twelve questions, five of 
which run as follows : — 1. Describe the process for the continuous manufacture 
of ether. 2. Describe the process for the manufacture of spirits of nitre! 
3. Describe the manufacture of chloroform. 4. Describe the manufacture of spt. 
am. co. 10. Give a short description of the general principles of the atomic theory 
and atomic proportions. 
If the students of the college are able, in two hours, to answer these five 
questions, and also, in a measure, “to floor” the remaining seven, they must be 
exceptionally clever young men. 
Surely it would be better, in a chemistry, paper to cast the questions in 
such a form that the examiners might be able to estimate if the candidate 
was clear as to the rationale of the various processes, and this would apparently 
be best shown by the use of symbolic notation in the answers. From the 
way in which the questions are worded the student need only commit to 
memory the P.B. directions, and on the day of examination place on paper 
as quickly as possible , if he would get through the whole of his mnemonic 
store, the result of his learning by heart. 
Again, where will the pharmaceutical tyro find a process for the manufacture 
of spirits of nitre ? Not in any of his text books, but in the old London 
Pharmacopoeias, where it is ordered to be made with spirit of wine and nitric 
