13 6 SEPARATION OP PHARMACY FROM THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE. 
on this point. Many circumstances may have prevented assistants being ac¬ 
tually engaged always between July 31st, 1865, and July 31st, 1868. We 
apprehend, however, that the Registrar will be allowed to construe this pro¬ 
vision according to its spirit rather than its letter, as we presume the ob¬ 
ject of those who introduced the condition was simply that persons claiming 
under it should be those still connected with pharmacy, although an interval 
of a few months might have elapsed in their engagements. 
Hitherto men in business on their own account could not legally remain 
Associates of the Pharmaceutical Society. Hereafter they may do so ; and if 
they choose to pay the same subscription as members (one guinea annually), 
they may have the privilege of attending meetings of the Society and voting 
thereat. The assistants to be registered after the modified examination just 
mentioned will be eligible for election as Associates. 
Another important change in the rules of the Pharmaceutical Society is in¬ 
troduced by the provision of the 21st clause, which enables all voters, whether 
residing in the country or London, to vote by forwarding their voting-papers 
to the Secretary, instead of attending personally on the day of election. It 
has hitherto been compulsory on all voters residing within five miles of the 
General Post-Office to appear at the place of meeting, if they desired to vote 
for Members of Council. 
SEPARATION OP PHARMACY PROM THE PRACTICE OP 
MEDICINE. 
Those who are engaged in the several departments connected with the ad¬ 
ministration of medicine, cannot too carefully or frequently consider their re¬ 
lative positions and the duties they respectively owe to themselves, to each 
other, and to the public. It is a natural tendency of intellectual develop¬ 
ment and the advancement of science and art, to promote an extension of the 
division of labour. With the progress of knowledge, the genus “Jack of all 
trades ” becomes more and more superseded by “ Masters of Arts,” and the 
satisfaction experienced in the performance of work by a skilled workman, 
makes him indisposed to engage in occupations for which he has no adequate 
qualification. There is ample illustration of this result in the history of the 
practice of medicine. 
The physician, having acquired a general, but to some extent superficial, 
knowledge of what relates to each department of his profession, takes a special 
department to the study of which he devotes his particular attention, and by 
the cultivation of this branch of medical knowledge he seeks and may suc¬ 
ceed in attaining to a position of eminence,—one acknowledged by those most 
competent to judge. But even the pure physician will find the whole range 
of human diseases too wide to enable him, within the limited space of human 
experience and with ordinary powers of observation, to attain to equal skill 
in the treatment of all, and he will derive most satisfaction and credit by ap¬ 
plying his powers where they are likely to be productive of the best results. 
The surgeon, starting from the same common ground as the physician, takes 
a different department for special cultivation,—one which partakes more of 
the nature of an art, and which accomplishes its objects by means and with 
results that are more obviously related and more generally credited. But 
here, again, there is found to be room for a division of labour. The opera¬ 
tive surgeon, the oculist, theplentist, the accoucheur, are so many separate 
departments, created by the high cultivation of each. It is no disparagement 
