340 
THE PROPOSED MEDICAL DILL A ELECTING PHARMACY. 
Land,—an excitement of which the Pharmaceutical Society are not likely to be 
unmoved or indifferent spectators. 
The chief ground for alarm is, of course, the circumstance that no provision 
appears in the present draft of the Bill for the protection of those who are 
already in business; but it must be remembered that the present is but the 
draft of the proposed measure, put forth for the consideration, as it is stated, 
of the Medical Council when it shall meet, subject to many additions and altera¬ 
tions, and concerning all the provisions of which the framers declared they were 
not themselves fully agreed. The Legislature will never pass a measure which 
shall disregard the just claims of existing interests, and any attempt to do so 
would meet with the strenuous opposition of the Council of the Pharmaceutical 
Society. 
If indeed their own members were all that the Council cared to j)rotect, 
they might dismiss all alarm about the matter,—they at any rate are safe; and it 
is only because the Pharmaceutical Society are ever ready to take charge of the 
interests of all, whether members or not, as they did in the case of the Poison 
Bills, that they need much concern themselves about it. At the same time they 
must remind the trade generally of that which has always happened before,—that 
there is very great difficulty in seeking to preserve the interests of those who 
are at present in business, from the impossibility of giving any legal definition of 
what a chemist and druggist is. Is he one who deals in drugs and chemicals ? 
Then every grocer, oilman, chandler-shop-keeper, etc., who sells Epsom salts, 
sulphur, etc. etc., may claim under the Act to be registered and declared by the 
Government to be a fit person to compound medicines. Will the Legislature ever 
sanction this ? And what will those say about it who are continually declaring 
it to be the duty of the Pharmaceutical Society to strive for a law to prevent 
any but a chemist from selling drugs, etc., when the register will at once give 
such men an equal right with themselves ? Suppose it is said that none who have 
not served an apprenticeship shall be registered, the question again recurs, an 
apprenticeship to whom ? To any dealer in drugs and chemicals ? Then every ap¬ 
prentice to a grocer, oilman, painter, chandler-shop-keeper, or any one else whose 
master sold these things may claim to be put upon the register, as a person qua¬ 
lified (if he be in business at the passing of the Act) to make up prescriptions 
and stand by the side of the educated chemist and druggist. And if there be 
a demand on the part of the public that their lives and health should be protected 
from men utterly incompetent, is the Legislature likely to perpetuate by that 
registration the very mischief complained of until the present generation of 
shopkeepers have passed away ? These things have led every framer of Bills 
concerning Pharmacy to maintain that there was no way but examination of 
those already in business, to separate those who should be protected from those 
who did not deserve it. Whether these views will still sway the Legislature 
it is impossible to tell, but all that the Pharmaceutical Society can do for the 
interests of all, they will do, as they ever have done. 
It is true that the Council might, without injustice, hold other language. 
They might say to a very large number of those who call loudly for the aid of 
the Society :— u Were you not warned over and over again that occasions of this 
sort would arise; and were you not repeatedly offered ten years ago free admis¬ 
sion into the Society without examination, and perfect equality with all who be¬ 
longed to it; and were not warnings and exhortations in vain ? Did you ever 
aid the Society with a shilling of your money ? Have you not rather taken 
every opportunity to disparage it ? and have you not dissuaded your assistants 
and apprentices from joining it when they were disposed to do so? What claim 
can you have to the help of the Society ?” But the Council will not thus reply, 
but will endeavour to care for the welfare of all who belong to the class whose 
best interests they have ever sought to promote. 
