THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL. 
SECOND SERIES. 
VOL. X.—No. TIL—SEPTEMBER, 18(58. 
THE NEW PHARMACY ACT. 
So many inquiries as to the construction to be put on various sections of 
the new Pharmacy Act, and the steps necessary to be taken to obtain regis¬ 
tration under it, have reached us, that, although we elsewhere refer our cor¬ 
respondents to the Registrar for information in individual cases, we think it 
well to state here, as clearly as we can, in language more familiar than par¬ 
liamentary phraseology, the general requirements of, and the privileges 
secured by, this great addition to the Act of 1852 ; believing, as we do, that 
if carried out honestly, but yet liberally, a vast amount of good wiH be 
accomplished for pharmacy. We feel, too, that it is the Pharmaceutical So¬ 
ciety which initiated, and to whom the execution of the Act has been en¬ 
trusted ; and we hold it as a great and important trust,—a trust involving 
the interest of the Society itself, of a still greater range of chemists and drug¬ 
gists not hitherto connected with the Society, and of every member of the 
community who, or whose friends, may at any time have occasion to resort 
to the aid of medicine. It is true that the Act opens with the avowed pur¬ 
pose of regulating the sale of poisons, but it is equally true that it ends by 
declaring its title to be “ The Pharmacy Act, 1868 and no man can read it; 
through without at once discovering the correctness of this latter description. 
Every qualification for vendors of poisons is a qualification to practise phar¬ 
macy, and necessarily so when with the selling of these dangerous articles is 
coupled also the dispensing and compounding of them. This is a provision 
which must hereafter enforce the education of every dispensing chemist. It 
is evident that a person who is not permitted to compound a mixture contain¬ 
ing opium, chloroform, emetic tartar, or any other poison enumerated in the 
schedule, will be practically unable to undertake dispensing at all. The 
Pharmaceutical Society, as we have said, initiated the Act, and is charged to 
carry it into operation. It is, therefore, the duty of the Society to give early 
information to those who will hereafter be affected by it, both as to regu¬ 
lations they w ill have to observe and privHeges placed within their reach, 
more especially as some of the latter, if not applied for before the end of the 
present year, can only be had afterwards at greater cost, and some would 
be lost altogether. 
To commence, then, with the duties enforced. Passing over the preamble, 
which is a mere enunciation of principles, we find that, after the 31st day of 
December next, no person can sell, or keep open shop for compounding poi¬ 
sons, or call himself a chemist and druggist, or chemist or druggist, or phar¬ 
macist, or dispensing chemist, or druggist, in Great Britain, unless he is 
registered under this Act; and he cannot be so registered if he be not a 
pharmaceutical chemist, or a chemist and druggist who kept an open shop 
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