EDINBURGH MEETING. 
527 
careful consideration of the local members and examiners, whom I know to be animated 
by the desire to befriend their younger brethren, and I dare say some of them might even 
be induced to give a course of instruction before proceeding to examination. 
One matter now remains for me to glance at, viz. remuneration. It must have oc¬ 
curred to many of you that the present scale is altogether inadequate and dispropor¬ 
tionate to the outlay, time, talents, and constant personal care requisite to the faithful 
discharge of the duties imposed on chemists. 
Apprentices must now of necessity be drawn from a higher and better educated class, 
and the examinations will deter many uneducated youths from entering a trade which 
has long been popularly but erroneously supposed to be the most lucrative under the 
sun ; the result of this, I do not doubt, will be that for at least a time the numbers will 
decrease, and those who remain as assistants will have to be paid much larger salaries 
than the pittances which unfortunately rule at present. It has often been a problem to 
me how so many were able to live and decently clothe themselves on the paltry income 
derived from their occupation—an income which I know for a certainty would be sneered 
at by those in the same positions in other trades, even by artisans. This, I dare say, will 
shortly be rectified by force of circumstances ; but I think it would be well, whilst the 
remembrance of a Pharmacy Act must still be fresh in the minds of the public, to gra¬ 
dually accustom them to look upon the profession as slightly elevated above the com¬ 
mon occupations of life, that the prime cost of our wares is no criterion to their retail 
value, and that the labour and responsibility of dispensing medicines must be paid for 
on a different scale from the trimming a bonnet or patching a shoe. 
That this is not already the case must be due in great measure to the low value which 
the great body of pharmaceutists have hitherto put upon their own services, and the 
first step towards a recognition of their true value is to take the initiative yourselves 
and look upon pharmacy as a learned profession, on your time as money, and on your 
services and acquirements as deserving some adequate reward. Gentlemen, wdien you 
do this, and arrange your scale of charges with such regard to your own abilities and 
deserts, the beginning of the good time will have arrived, and the future may then be 
looked forward to without fear for the visits of the house-agent or tax-gatherer; and we 
will then be enabled to lift the veil that shrouds it sufficiently far to see the trade ele¬ 
vated as a profession, practised by gentlemen whose proper position is acknowledged by 
society, and who, instead of taking the cue from the medical profession and being in a 
manner tolerated by them, may, by establishing a school of pharmacy, be enabled to 
teach them in return many a good lesson in dispensing and incompatibles, and a much 
needed reform of the caligraphic art in prescribing. 
It is all very well to say you have your reward in spending your lives in the allevia¬ 
tion of human suffering, without soiling your fingers with the sordid brass ; the theory 
is Howard-like, the practice Quixotic. 
Allow me then, in conclusion, to express the hope that these anticipations of the en¬ 
lightened future may soon be realized, and that every one, according to his station and 
abilities, may put his shoulder to the w T ork and give a push upward for the general 
good. 
Professor Archer thought that Mr.Leitch was quite wrong in finding fault with the fees 
which were exigible under the new Pharmacy Act. He could speak the more strongly 
upon this point, because he was what might be termed an outsider, and further re¬ 
marked, that having had the privilege of becoming acquainted eighteen years ago with 
the prime mover in the attempt to gain for pharmacy a better footing and a higher po¬ 
sition than it ever had in this country, he could assure the meeting the difficulties which 
had to be encountered, and which had been successfully overcome, were not few. 
Mr. Mackay made some remarks on a few of the points noticed by Mr. Leitch, 
stating that many of the ideas thrown out had for some time been thoroughly canvassed 
both in the leaders and correspondence of the ‘ Pharmaceutical Journal,’ and referred 
Mr. Leitch to some of them, where he would find the Society had been obliged from the 
pressure of circumstances to give way, in many of their views, to the wishes of a higher 
power, namely, the Government of this country. Mr. Mackay further stated, that as to 
the want expressed in reference to Professor Bentley’s excellent ‘ Manual of Botany,’ for 
which there had been such an extraordinary demand, with not a single copy to be had, 
the new edition was in the press, and might be expected to be ready for the bookseller 
some time in April at the latest. 
