314 
REMUNERATION EOR RESPONSIBILITY. 
The hope of better days, when the pharmaceutist shall be regarded as a 
member of an honourable and worthy profession, rests not so much, I think, on 
the fact of his being legally recognized and protected from competition with 
ignorant meddlers with remedial agents, but upon the excision and abandon¬ 
ment of illegitimate departments of his business, and a more exclusive devotion 
of time and talent to his true profession. To do this, however, a considerable 
augmentation must be made in charges, which cannot longer be based upon the 
intrinsic value of medicines, nor upon the time occupied in their dispensing, 
but on the knowledge which enables the dispenser faithfully to further and 
interpret the wishes of the physician, thus rendering the former responsible 
trustee of the public weal. 
Since illness is an exceptional condition, and medicines only the need of the 
sick, and as prescriptions are in the highest degree urgent and specific instruc¬ 
tions, requiring peculiar and precise manipulation, so then in proportion must 
charges be unusual and as independent of ordinary commerce as would 
be the cost of a special train compared with the stated fares of the regular 
traffic. 
The social status of an English pharmaceutist is, without contradiction, 
abased by the trade he conducts in goods in nowise to be regarded as accessories 
of pharmacy. This rule applies generally, but more particularly to the pro¬ 
vinces. Years, long and many, will come and go before a country pharmacy 
will be able to support itself by a commerce purely medical. Not until country 
practitioners shall cease to dispense their own medicines, and no longer supply 
surgical appliances, can this be effected. 
How has protection influenced pharmacy in other countries ? My experience 
in France and Italy goes to prove that although the pharmacien of the Conti¬ 
nent may be mieux considere than of yore, he is still, as Dorvault says, but “ a 
slave in the midst of free citizens,” for unless he happen to be the lucky pro¬ 
prietor of some successful speciality, his position, too poor to support the ex¬ 
pense of an assistant, is one of the most painful imaginable, since, “indepen¬ 
dently of his loss of liberty, he has neither the leisure nor the inclination to 
occupy himself with scientific labours.” The secret of his non-success, mate¬ 
rially speaking, lies in the fact of his charges being ridiculously insufficient. 
These are, to some extent, kept down by tradition, it being the popular belief 
that enormous profits appertain to dispensing. The Continental pharmacien 
possesses an advantage over the greater portion of his English brethren, in 
having, generally, a well-fitted laboratory attached to his pharmacy. 
I am not, however, of opinion with Mr. Giles, that pharmaceutical prepa¬ 
rations, such as vegetable extracts, pilula hydrargyri, or unguentum hydrargyri, 
could be as well or as cheaply prepared at home as by wholesale manufacturers 
whose exclusive attention is directed to their production, and whose machinery 
and apparatus are of a kind far beyoud the reach of the retail pharmacist. 
In regard to a suggestion made at the Norwich Conference that the exami¬ 
nation of assistants under the new Act should be “ local and simultaneous,” it 
seems to me that the necessary organizing of various centres of examiners would 
involve a vast amount of trouble, and that it would be more satisfactory to 
assistants that they should be examined at the parent institution, from which 
the honour of a successful issue would seem the greater and the more sub¬ 
stantial. It would likewise be the only means of ensuring a test of proficiency 
of equal rigour in each case. 
In conclusion, should the necessity of still further ameliorating the phar¬ 
macist’s position form the basis of future legislation, let us hope he may be 
treated in a respectful and considerate spirit, having in grateful remembrance 
those illustrious members of the confraternity who have contributed in all ages 
to the advancement of human progress by their scientific discoveries, not for- 
