146 
BRITISH PHARMACEUTICAL CONFERENCE. 
Mr. Deane said : The object of our meeting together on this occasion is, as 
you are aware, to establish an annual Conference, to be held in different parts 
of the country, for the purpose of affording a periodical opportunity of meeting 
our brethren in the provinces and discussing various subjects of the highest im¬ 
portance to us in our public and private relations, an object in which I fully 
concur, and, I trust, if carried out in the spirit in which it has been conceived, 
it will tend to promote the interest and brotherly unity of all engaged in the 
work ; as well as to still further raise the practice of pharmacy more nearly to 
the character of a profession in the public estimation than it at present pos¬ 
sesses, although much and great good has been done in this direction by the 
Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, whose labours to promote this great 
object have been incessant for the last twenty years. As we are not a rich body, 
time is of great value to us, and moreover, personal attention to business is an 
essential element of success in it; it is therefore almost impossible to centralize 
our operations in a fixed locality so as to enable many individuals of so exten¬ 
sive and scattered a body to take part in the consideration and discussion of 
such subjects as will come within the scope and design of our Conference. But 
it has been thought by some amongst us that if we could have a friendly 
gathering either at the time of the meeting of the British Association or some 
other time that might be considered more convenient, a much greater number 
might be found to take an interest in the science and art of our trade than at 
present do. Many would look forward to these gatherings with interest, partly 
for the sake of the gratification of meeting their brethren and exchanging ideas, 
and partly for the sake of the increase of knowledge they will gain from the 
papers and reports which it is hoped will be abundantly furnished on each oc¬ 
casion. At the present time the profits resulting from the exercise of our deeply 
responsible occupation are so small, and the necessity for personal attention at 
every hour of the day and night so urgent and imperative, that the mind be¬ 
comes depressed, and a man seems to live for no other earthly object than to 
keep soul and body together with the scanty pittance his business brings him 
in ; and the energy and talent which might be devoted to improving his mind 
and elevating his position, is kept in abeyance for want of a motive to exertion. 
But is it not probable that a wdiolesome stimulus to intellectual exertion may 
be given by the prospect of annual gatherings of this kind, and that men in 
looking forward to them will look around to see whether they too cannot add a 
little, however small, to the usefulness of the meeting, and that stock of know¬ 
ledge which is so important to their own welfare and success in life ? and eacli 
may begin to see more clearly that a man’s duty is not confined within the four 
walls of a shop, but that there is a duty to the class to which he belongs and to 
the public also; and that as the love of truth and order and precision gain 
ground amongst them, inferior, adulterated, and spurious drugs will no longer 
be in demand : and the public and medical profession will perceive that although 
under the necessity of keeping a shop and wearing an apron, however humble 
a man’s means or income may be, derived from the honourable exercise of his 
calling, he will not be stigmatized as most of our brethren at present are as a 
mere shopkeeper, but be looked upon as a veritable and important, though 
humble member of the medical profession. This work must necessarily be slow, 
as many of us are wall aware from the experience of the last twenty years ; but 
if we can give a stimulus in the right direction and maintain it, our meetings 
of the Conference will not be in vain. 
I believe that one of the greatest difficulties we at present have to contend 
against is ignorance in our own body, and that ignorance chiefly arising from 
the deficient and defective education of the youths who are apprenticed to the 
trade. Their knowledge of arithmetic does not always include the rule of three, 
for I have met with many who could not state a simple rule of three sum 
