SEPARATION OF PHARMACY FROM THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE. 117 
to a skilled operator, in any one of these departments, to say that he is com¬ 
paratively unfitted for others. Practically the more he attains to eminence 
in one, the less he desires to practise in those for which his attainments have 
not equally well lifted him. 
Again, the pharmacist, if his department be less strictly medical, inasmuch 
as it does not necessarily require the same general medical foundation as those 
previously noticed,—if the knowledge involved in the qualification needed 
for the practice of his department is less comprehensive and more easily ac¬ 
quired than that of the physician or the surgeon, it is, nevertheless, a depart¬ 
ment involving duties, the efficient performance of which is essential to the 
successful administration of medicine. The physician who practises phar¬ 
macy as veell as medicine, will neglect one or attain to eminence in neither. 
What a relief to the exhausted powers of mind and body, after a day spent in 
visiting the sick, are the occupations of the dispensary, among dusty pots and 
bottles ! More congenial, perhaps, it might be, and certainly more conducive 
to the interests of the patient, if the time thus spent were devoted to a quiet 
retrospect of the experiences of the day, and to communion, through their 
works, with eminent w r riters, in cases of doubt or difficulty; but dispensary 
duties leave little time for this. And, as for the remedies, the choice is limited 
to what may happen to be the stock-in-trade. This bottle is emptv, the con¬ 
tents of that pot are mouldy, and of the other rancid. The grateful aromatic 
infusion takes too long to make ; if particularly required, it must be replaced 
by a spirituous but vapid and flavourless substitute. New r and better reme¬ 
dies there may be; but w 7 here are they ? The mixture, be it what it may, 
must serve its purpose; it is subject to no subsequent scrutiny. 
Does not the mind, educated and cultivated for the higher walks of the me¬ 
dical profession, trained and qualified for accurate diagnosis, stored with a 
knowledge of the best established facts in therapeutics, and anxious to test 
the experiences of others, to enter the field of research, and to enrich its 
stores in the interests of humanity,—does it not turn from the distasteful 
drudgery of mixing pills and boluses, and leave with satisfaction the practice 
of pharmacy to those who, by education and habit, are best fitted to make it 
a valuable and necessary adjunct of the healing art, providing with skill and 
supplying faithfully the best know T n means for alleviating human suffering 
under disease ? 
As surgery, in its highest and most perfected departments, has been sepa¬ 
rated from the general practice of medicine, and has even itself undergone 
various subdivisions, so has pharmacy been made a distinct occupation or 
calling. Wherever this separation has been most systematically carried out, 
means have been devised for enforcing it; but in this country it has been 
left to the discretion of those w ho are engaged in the practice of medicine, and 
to the conventional law’s by which professional conduct is controlled. There 
has, however, been a progressive tendency in favour of this separation for se¬ 
veral years past. Many general practitioners have ceased to prepare their 
own medicines, and have adopted the practice of receiving a fee and waiting a 
prescription. If this system w ere more generally adopted, we believe it would 
tend greatly to the interest of all parties concerned ; but of course it w 7 ould be 
necessary, a< the same time, that dispensers should abstain from prescribing. 
Much has been done, through the efforts of the Pharmaceutical Society, to 
discourage counter practice among its members. In addition to the force of 
example and precept, as set forth by the leading and most influential members 
of the Society, the educational means which have been provided through 
their instrumentality, have also tended in that direction. We should 
greatly rejoice to see the same evidence of a determination on the part of 
chemists and druggists to abstain from prescribing, as w’e believe there is of 
