430 
MEDICAL AND PHARMACEUTICAL LEGISLATION. 
Council liacl never so much, as discussed, was referred to as a matured mea¬ 
sure having the sanction of the highest medical authority, and contemplating 
the disfranchisement of many thousands of chemists and druggists who have 
been engaged for years in the legitimate exercise of their business. It was 
in vain that we pointed to the crude nature of the measure under discussion, 
to the fact of its being only the outline of a Bill, to the improbability, nay, the 
impossibility, of any measure being carried through Parliament that proposed 
to deprive thousands of respectable tradesmen of the right to exercise the 
trade to which they had been educated, to which they had devoted the greater 
part of their lives, and in which was invested their only means of support. 
There, it was said in reply, was the proposed Bill, and it contained no exemp¬ 
tion in favour of vested interests ; and if a Juries Bill could be carried which 
gave privileges to pharmaceutists from which others engaged in the same 
business were excluded, might not this new medical Bill inflict something 
equally unpalatable upon the unincorporated, unregistered, and unrecognized 
members of the drug trade ? If the proposed measure has done nothing 
more, it has stirred up many of those who had previously remained callous 
to the appeals made to them by the advocates of pharmaceutical education 
and organization, and it appears to Lave opened the eyes of many to the 
necessity of at least doing something in furtherance of those objects. 
In the discussion of this subject the members of the Pharmaceutical Society 
have not until recently taken a prominent part. They have manifested a dis¬ 
position to wait the result of the decisions to be arrived at by the medical 
licensing bodies, and founded upon these the final decision of the Medical 
Council. From the first introduction of the subject it has been felt that the 
principles involved in the propositions relating to pharmacy in the proposed 
Bill are in the main such as have always been advocated by the supporters 
of the Pharmaceutical Society, and although in some respects these princi¬ 
ples have not recently been acted upon, nor any attempts made to carry 
them into effect, this has arisen from the influence of past experience with 
reference to pharmaceutical legislation. 
It has always been a prominent object with the leading supporters of the 
Pharmaceutical Society to extend the education, examination, and registra¬ 
tion which have been established to all the members of the trade, and to 
make examination and registration necessary qualifications for the practice of 
pharmacy, at least in its higher departments. It was even at one time sug¬ 
gested that the College of Physicians should be associated with the Pharma¬ 
ceutical Society in carrying out this object, so that all that is comprised in 
the first three propositions accords with views that have been entertained by 
the active promoters of pharmaceutical legislation. We are not aware that 
any change of opinion has taken place on these points excepting with regard 
to the practicability of carrying them into effect. The support given to Mr. 
Bell’s Pharmacy Bill in the form in which it was submitted to Parliament, 
was not calculated to encourage the expectation that the Legislature would 
sanction the restriction of the practice of pharmacy to examined men, and 
the tendenc 3 ' of legislation since that time, with reference to medicine, has 
been rather in the other direction. The most that has latterly been looked 
for has been the exclusive right to the use of a title implying qualification by 
those whose qualifications have been tested and proved by examination, and 
some privilege in other respects, such as exemption from serving on juries, 
which it might be found practicable to afford them. In the discussion of 
questions affecting the welfare of the Pharmaceutical Society within the last 
two or three years this view of the subject appears to have prevailed, and any 
attempt to get more exclusive privileges has been considered hopeless. 
But the success attending the efforts made two years ago with reference to 
