THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL 
SECOND SERIES. 
VOL. V.—No. IX.—MARCH 1st, 1864. 
THE PROPOSED LEGISLATION APFECTING PHARMACY. 
Many of our readers have undoubtedly observed the agitation around them 
on this subject; it is not simply in the journals devoted to pharmacy that the 
question has been discussed, nor even that what may fairly be called the higher 
medical journals have taken it up, but it is now considered of sufficient public 
interest to be introduced into the ordinary newspapers ; some of them express¬ 
ing opinions which, in our judgment, appear most just and reasonable. And if 
others differ from us, and assign to pharmacy a less important place than it 
deserves, we must still regard the whole as working for our benefit. It is full 
and free ventilation which in nine cases out of ten places a disputed point in its 
proper light, or brings a neglected one before the minds of men vffio are in¬ 
terested in its final adjustment. 
Twenty years or more ago, the founders of the Pharmaceutical Society said, 
“ the dispensing of medicines , involving as it does the life and health of the 
public , should be confinedj to those who possess a competent knowledge of the 
nature and properties of drugs f ten years later the same men made earnest 
efforts to obtain a legislative enactment so to confine it, and were only defeated 
by a certain free-trade principle, which rebelled at the idea of restricting the 
sale of anything. Unfortunately the traffic in medicine, unlike that in tea, 
brandy, and spices, was not one from which the Board of Inland Revenue could 
extract a toll, and so only a voluntary qualification was established. But even 
this concession confirmed the views of our predecessors, and the seed then cast 
into the earth now brings forth what seems to be a vigorous plant. On all hands it 
is acknowledged now that the dispensers of medicines should possess '‘'‘compe¬ 
tent knowledge .” We say on all hands, but there is one melancholy and unfortu¬ 
nate dissentient, one whom least of all we should have expected to find in opposi¬ 
tion—our worthy contemporary the ‘ Medical Times,’ which states in an article 
of February 13th, “ that any intelligent , neat-handed lad, or woman of ordinary 
education , can be taught to dispense accurately and well in three months ” ! 
A journal is supposed to express the opinions of the class for whom, and gene¬ 
rally by whom, it is written; but knowing what we do of the physicians and 
surgeons of England, we fearlessly deny that this opinion is held by them. If 
indeed it were a question of mere manipulation, we could not dispute that in 
three months the mechanical operations of weighing, measuring, and, to some 
extent , compounding, might be acquired ; but will our friend utterly ignore the 
higher qualification necessary for one to whom is entrusted the preparation of 
medicine? Is no knowledge of the power of the articles to be weighed, mea¬ 
sured, and compounded, necessary ? A case strikes us at once. A month ago a 
VOL. V. 2d 
