50 THE SALE OF POISONS AND EXTENSION OF PHARMACY ACT. 
Men less acquainted with these opposing interests, and with the details of the 
trade of chemists and druggists, were puzzled to realize all these difficulties, and 
for that reason the Pharmacy Act of 1808 will strike some of our readers as ' 
being less liberal than the Bill discussed from time to time in this Journal. 
Those who have had to fight the battle inch by inch, advocating vested interests 
and expediency, can alone know the determination which had to be encountered 
in the work. 
In the first clause of the Bill an alteration was made whereby all existing che¬ 
mists who choose to continue the sale and compounding of poisons must submit 
to registration. This is undoubtedly right in principle, although contrary to 
the resolution of the Committee of the House of Commons which sat in 1865. 
It is, however, so guarded in clause 5, that all who apply for registration before 
the 1st of January, 1869, may secure it without payment of any fee , so that the 
hardship is very small, if any, compared to the advantage which will be secured 
thereby. We feel it our duty to draw attention to the time at which this regis¬ 
tration without fee will cease. 
Again, in the fourth clause, under which apprentices and assistants were to 
have been admitted to the roll of chemists and druggists, the promoters of the 
Bill were given to understand by the party represented in the House by no less 
able an advocate than Mr. Lowe, that if such a provision remained the Bill it¬ 
self should be opposed at every stage ; and a notice was given by Mr. Lowe to 
expunge the clause entirely. To meet this difficulty, Lord Elcho proposed that 
assistants should be admitted on passing a modified examination, and even to 
that proposition his lordship had to accept the additional condition of a period 
of three years’ service as an assistant. Such assistants must make application 
before the last day of the present year , not necessarily to be examined before that 
time, but that the filing of their applications may be secured, and their regis¬ 
tration in due course obtained. Again, we call special attention to the dates 
put down in the Bill. 
Much disappointment will undoubtedly be felt at the omission of the clause 
exempting all chemists and druggists from serving on juries. The legitimate 
reason for excusing them from this duty rests on the fact that men who have 
to minister to the necessity of the public in cases of emergency, and who fre¬ 
quently have no better substitute than a young apprentice to leave in charge 
of what may be called dangerous duties, are of more value to the community in 
their own shops than in the jury-box. The exempting clause passed through 
the House of Lords, and was unchallenged until it reached the committee of 
the Commons. Perhaps its rejection there may be explained by the fact that 
the report of a commission appointed specially to consider the jury laws gene¬ 
rally had just been presented, and it will scarcely surprise those who have 
read an article on that report which appeared in the 1 Times * of July 28th. 
Of course, the argument against non-service was the complimentary one 
usually put forth, that, in striking chemists off the jury panel, you de¬ 
prive the country of the best qualified class of men now liable to serve. It 
was scarcely to be expected that in giving to chemists and druggists the 
sole right to sell or compound poisons, Parliament would do so without 
imposing some fixed rules to be observed. We can all of us look back to 
the proposals contained in former Poison Bills,—proposals of mechanical 
contrivance, and a certain system of segregating poisons in all shops alike, 
—proposals, in fact, to be applied under all circumstances, whether fitting or 
not, and quite independent of the discretion of the master of the shop, who 
might, for all which appeared to the contrary, be utterly ignorant of the 
danger of the articles in which he dealt; and it seems but natural, although 
education is now taken as a groundwork, that some of these traditions should 
still linger among officials, who are prone to make and govern model communi- 
