524 
EDINBURGH MEETING. 
value the various adjuncts to the trade which, in smaller towns especially, have hitherto 
been necessary to the eking out of a decent income, as no man can be better aware from 
actual observation of the small sphere there is in country towns for those who desire to 
stick exclusively to their legitimate trade. These men have all along been hampered 
by petty dealers, and others having no special education, and whose only qualifications 
for the practice of pharmacy were the ability to furnish a shop, put coloured carboys in 
the windows, and stick up “Chemist and Druggist.” 
We can well imagine, if we have not experienced, how galling it must have been to 
many a man who spent his youth as an apprentice, and the best years of his manhood 
as an assistant, with a microscopic salary, scraping and saving until he could open for 
himself, to find a large part of his legitimate trade diverting into some of these chan¬ 
nels, and absorbed by the parasites who are always ready to affix themselves to any 
trade where they see the legitimate dealer successful. People say that these things 
will right themselves in time, and that the public will soon come to find out the best 
shop ; but many a good man has gone to the wall whilst they were making the discovery, 
and we all know how fond a considerable number of the said public are of a cheap 
bargain, even in physic. 
Present .—I must now, however, congratulate the profession on the dawn of a new 
era, and that brings us to the present state of the profession. 
I think I am near the mark when I say that we are now in the process of transition, 
and that sooner or later, be it in our day or in the next generation, last year’s legisla¬ 
tion will bring forth its fruit, in a profusion which would gladden the hearts of those 
who have laboured for its promotion; but not to be too sanguine as to the results, none 
can deny that it is a great stride in the right direction. 
I know I begin to tread on delicate ground when within these walls, sacred as the 
scene where lately so many have well earned their various titles, and proved their quali¬ 
fication to take their places amongst the most honoured dispensers of our day. I feel 
the delicacy the more when I am addressing men so much older, more experienced, and 
better able to judge than myself; but in the interests of a very great number of my 
brethren, I must distinctly state my conviction that the recent Act of Parliament is not 
only insufficient for some of the purposes it was designed to serve, in that it does not go 
far enough for the suppression of illegitimate traders, whilst it imposes many vexatious 
restrictions on the trade proper,—but it commits what is felt to be great injustice on 
qualified individuals who had no voice in its production, and no appeal against its 
enactments. 
In the first place then, I think that some means might have been devised whereby the 
poor and ill-advised public might have been protected from the wiles of those scourges, 
the so-called “ Professors of Medical Botany,” “ Herbalists,” “ Botanical Institutes,” and 
“ Secret Advisers.” 
These trades are of small reckoning here, but I have frequently been a witness in 
other large towns of their roaring trade and pernicious effects. 
You need only to look at the physique of the customers to see at a glance their gulli¬ 
bility, and the hold the professors have over their persons and purses; and this goes on 
until their constitutions are ruined or their resources exhausted, or both. In the second 
place, I think injustice has been done, or at least hardships inflicted on a very large 
section of our body, viz. Assistants and Apprentices. For whilst free registration was 
accorded to men in business on their own account, Assistants and Apprentices can only 
register their qualifications, or can at least not hereafter commence business without the 
payment of fees, which in many cases they can ill afford, and which, to say the least, 
seem to be a penalty exigible from them for being connected with the profession. Why 
should John Jones who opened a shop for dispensing the week before the passing of the 
Act, after having spent a year or two in a back slum compounding for a second-rate 
surgeon—why should he be registered as a chemist and druggist free of expense, whilst 
I, who served a full apprenticeship, and have been connected with pharmacy for fifteen 
years, have to pay five guineas, and run the risk of being plucked into the bargain, fur 
the like title ? 1 humbly think the more correct procedure would have been as in the 
case of the late Medical Act, by which every doctor or surgeon in practice was compelled 
to prove his title and pay, I believe, a guinea for registration. Had such been done in 
the present case,—every man in business to pay a guinea or half-a-guinea, or what you 
will, for registration 5 ^ and the qualifications- of Assistants and Apprentices registered 
