THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL. 
SECOND SERIES. 
YOL. V.—No. X.—APRIL 1st, 1864. 
MEDICAL AND PHARMACEUTICAL LEGISLATION. 
In July of last year we announced tlie fact that a Committee of the 
General Council of Medical Education and Registration, to whom the con¬ 
sideration of the provisions of the Medical Act of 1858 had been submitted, 
had recommended that application should be made to Parliament for an 
amended Act, and that it was proposed in such new Act to include pharmacy 
among the departments of medical practice over which the Medical Council 
should exercise control. 
The propositions which the committee submitted to the Medical Council 
were embodied in the draft of a Bill, and the provisions of this Bill, in as far 
as they related to pharmacy, comprised— 
1. A general system of pharmaceutical education and examination, to be 
regulated by the Medical Council. 
2. The registration of all persons qualified to practise pharmacy, as tested 
by such examinations. 
3. The restriction of the right to dispense or compound the prescriptions 
of physicians or surgeons to qualified practitioners in pharmacy, and the im¬ 
position of a penalty upon those who shall keep open shop for compounding 
medicines without having passed the required examination. 
4. The appointment by the Medical Council of inspectors, whose duty it 
should be to see that the provisions of the Act, affecting pharmacy, were duly 
carried into effect. 
o. The prohibition of the sale of all secret remedies, and the imposition of a 
penalty for selling any patent or quack medicine, unless a sworn certificate of 
the composition of such medicine be exposed for inspection in the shop or 
place where it is sold. 
The Medical Council expressed no opinion upon this or any other part of the 
proposed BiU, but submitted the propositions to all the medical licensing 
bodies throughout the country for their opinions upon them. 
It was hardly to be supposed that the Pharmaceutical Society and the 
chemists and druggists not comprised in this Society, would remain indifferent 
or inactive observers of this movement with reference to legislation affecting 
pharmacy. This was not the first time that interference with the privileges 
and vested interests of chemists and druggists had been threatened under 
similar circumstances ; and although in this instance there was probably no 
intention on the part of the framers of the Bill to deprive those already in 
business of the power of exercising their lawful occupations as they had been 
accustomed to do, yet as the terms of the draft Bill certainly went to that 
effect, it could not be wondered at that chemists and druggists throughout 
the country, seeing a proposition for an Act of Parliament that appeared to 
threaten them with ruin, should be alarmed and ready to take action in self- 
defence. The subject at any rate presented a sufficient plea for an appeal to 
the fears of those who fancied themselves assailed, and, at the same time, in 
favour of association for mutual protection. Meetings of the trade were held 
in diffierent parts of the country, and at these the draft Bill, which the Medical 
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