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BRITISH PHARMACEUTICAL CONFERENCE. 
satisfactory, but it never appeared to me that this subject could be approached 
with advantage until some legislative measure similar to the Pharmacy 
Amendment Act had been passed. Low prices are generally the effect of 
excessive competition, and what hope was there of dealing with the question 
of prices when the competition was between the qualified and conscientious 
pharmaceutist, and the irregular interloper who tacked a degenerate phar¬ 
macy on to his miscellaneous pursuits? We may, however, now profitably 
devote some of our attention to the anomalies by which we find ourselves 
surrounded. 
First, we may remark that while our business is more responsible than any 
other trade and demands from us greater sacrifices, it is one which offers 
perhaps the smallest rewards of any. As, a trade its returns are very small, 
while its claim to a professional principle <S£ remuneration for that portion of 
its duties which are certainly quasi-professional is not recognized. All the 
operations of the dispensing counter are special, and it is a maxim in manu¬ 
factures that no special operation pays. This maxim ought therefore to 
govern our dispensing prices, and to secure for them something like a pro¬ 
fessional rate of remuneration. But in practice, I believe, no trade renders 
so large an amount of personal service for sixpence,—the usual price of half- 
a-dozen pills. I beg to doubt whether any pharmacy could be supported by 
a trade consisting entirely of making heterogeneous prescriptions of six pills 
for sixpence. 
Second, it is a curious inconsistency that our remuneration is in the inverse 
order of our responsibilities. For example, it is more profitable to us that 
the qualified assistants whose services we find it necessary to secure should 
be engaged in the trivial occupation of vending perfumery, hair-washes, and 
the like, than that they should be employed in the exercise of their higher 
qualifications in the responsible duty of dispensing prescriptions, often a 
duty of considerable anxiety. I do not of course mean that the percentage 
profit upon the goods sold is greater in the first case than in the last, but that 
an assistant can make a larger net return in the one case than in the other, 
and simply because the one trade is done by the dozen, while every indi¬ 
vidual transaction of the other is the subject of a separate manipulation. 
I do not think that this fact is sufficiently appreciated, but it helps to explain 
another anomaly, viz. that dispensing charges are usually lowest where dis¬ 
pensing forms but a small portion of the trade, and highest where the dis¬ 
pensing predominates. Ordinarily, increased production diminishes the cost 
of supply ; but the immense cost of dispensing'operations forces itself practi¬ 
cally upon the experience of the dispensing pharmaceutist, whereas the appa¬ 
rent large profit upon the cost of materials misleads the chemist and druggist 
by fallacious contrast with his retail transactions. The same topsy-turvy 
rule prevails if we confine our view to the varied operations of dispensing 
only. When we dispense single draughts or ordinary mixtures in dilute 
doses, we receive the largest profits with the smallest risks and the least 
anxiety; but when we have to dispense concentrated preparations, frequently 
of deadly ingredients, to be administered in drops, how easy is it for a fatal 
error to occur in the compounding, while any error in the label,—say the sub¬ 
stitution of a wrong label,—would almost certainly be dangerous ! For these 
critical operations our remuneration is little more than that of retail trade. 
This state of things must be wrong ; the question is how it can be reme¬ 
died. It has been sometimes suggested that our scale of charges should be 
governed by the number of doses, and although I do not think this principle 
can be applied undeviatingly, I do- think that it ought to receive more con¬ 
sideration, and I hope that some advocate of the system will support his 
views at the Norwich meeting. 
