THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL. 
SECOND SERIES. 
YOL. X.—No. Y.—NOVEMBER, 1863. 
LEGISLATION RESPECTING CHEMISTS AND DRUGGISTS. 
The time is rapidly approaching at which the Pharmacy Act of 1868 will 
become operative law. Two months hence it will be unlawful for any unregis¬ 
tered person to call himself a Chemist and Druggist, or, so far as selling or 
compounding the poisons enumerated in Schedule A of the Act are concerned, 
exercise the business of one. That this is a question to which other eyes than, 
those of Pharmaceutists have been directed may be gathered from a police case 
reported in the ‘ Times ’ a fortnight ago, on hearing which Mr. Flowers took oc¬ 
casion to observe that by a recent Act it was made an offence to sell any poison 
without duly labelling it, or to sell certain more deadly poisons without regis¬ 
tration of the sale, and a knowledge of the purchaser ; he further remarked, that 
had the seller of the poison, used on that occasion, been charged before him 
under the new statute, he, Mr. Flowers, would have had no option but to inflict 
a penalty of five pounds for a first offence, or ten for a second, and that he 
hoped his warning would go forth to the public, that the provisions of this most 
salutary enactment might become known. Seeing, therefore, that magistrates are 
prepared at once to carry out the law, we feel bound again and again to remind 
our readers of the time at which registration will be compulsory, and of the fact 
that unless that registration be applied for, on or before the last day of Decern- 
ber, by chemists already in business, they will on a later registration be required 
to pay the same fee as those who may hereafter come up for examination, namely, 
five pounds. However much the Pharmaceutical Society might be benefited 
by delay, we are quite sure, their objects being the safety of the public, the ad¬ 
vancement of Pharmacy, and the improvement of the trade, that their great 
desire is to draw the attention of all Chemists and Druggists to the time at 
which free registration will cease for men in business; and the opportunity for 
assistants who may desire to reserve to themselves the right of commencing 
business on their own account, after passing only a modified examination , be lost 
altogether. The synopsis of that examination has now been before them for two 
months, and we have heard no complaint concerning it. As a matter affecting 
future status we might be inclined rather to advise our younger readers to adopt 
the more decided step at once, and by a little application to prepare themselves 
for the “ Minor" instead of the “Modified,” feeling that a great proportion of 
them would then be induced ultimately to ascend yet higher and join the rank 
of Pharmaceutical Chemists. Some men have expressed an opinion, that here¬ 
after Chemists and Druggists, having all the trading privileges belonging to their 
calling, will be in a majority over Pharmaceutical Chemists. We cannot share 
this expectation. When a trade becomes a profession, or even takes to itself 
a professional or scientific character, titles of honour become important, not 
simply in the eyes of its members but also in the estimation of the public 
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