THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL 
SECOND SERIES. 
VOL. V.—No. VII.—JANUARY 1st, 1864. 
THE PROPOSED MEDICAL BILL AEFECTING PHARMACY. 
The United Society of Chemists and Druggists has just held a meeting of 
the trade, “ to take into consideration the best means of preventing the unwarrant¬ 
able interference of the Medical Council with the rights of Dispensing Chemists 
and it is interesting to read the opinions of the various gentlemen who took part, 
and the resolutions which were proposed thereat. 
With one exception (we read the report of the meeting in the ‘ Chemist and 
Druggist ’) every speaker acquiesced cordially in the necessity for an educational 
qualification, thereby justifying entirely the opinion of the Medical Council, 
that something should be done. The point at issue seems to be, who shall 
do it ? 
To us it appears to be a great pity, and a great mistake, to regard the Medical 
Council and the whole body of Chemists and Druggists as enemies one to the 
other : to suppose for one moment that the Medical Council, or any branch of 
the profession forming that Council, has any desire to monopolize the dispensing 
of medicine, or the traffic in drugs, is altogether opposed to the whole course of 
events in the profession during the last twenty years. There are the three divi¬ 
sions of Physicians, Surgeons, and Apothecaries. Man is ambitious,—it may be 
well for the progress of society that he should be so to a certain extent,—and we 
think even Apothecaries may be somewhat aspiring. They have no desire to be 
considered the “ caitiff wretches ” whom Shakspeare knew, and nine out of 
ten of them would hail the day which severed them from their dispensaries 
as one to be marked thereafter in their calendars as a u red-letter day,” a day 
on which the last link was broken which bound them to a ^(m-tracle, and pre¬ 
vented their claiming that full and free equality with Consulting Surgeons and 
Physicians they have so long desired. There is abundant evidence to support 
this conclusion in every place large enough to support such dispensing chemists 
as will enable the general practitioners to become th Qprescribers rather than the 
vendors of physic to their patients. It is not a mere question of status which 
makes such a course desirable. Everybody can sympathize with a gentleman 
who, being unable by custom to charge for advice, is compelled to drench his 
patient with physic to obtain anything like remuneration for his services. The 
medical journals openly advocate such a change. We would not be thought to 
disparage that branch of the profession which is thus passing from the apothe¬ 
caries to the chemists,—the mere fact of the severance of the prescriber from the 
dispenser would remove the reproach ; there would no longer be interest in 
giving, or the necessity to give, three draughts a day , with something extra now 
and then. 
YOL. Y. 
X 
