PHARMACEUTICAL MEETING, EDINBURGH. 
311 
suriug with neatness, dexterity, and scrupulous exactness the substances that are to be 
used as medicines. At first, only the less powerful medicines will be placed under your 
charge ; they will be put into your hands in order to prevent the danger of your mis¬ 
taking one for another, and your business will be to preserve a ready supply of those 
simple preparations which are most frequently required. At the same time you will 
exercise yourself in the recognition of drugs, so as to be able to distinguish one from 
another, and each by its own peculiar characters; and, in course of time, so far as their 
outward characters will determine it, you will be able to discriminate between good and 
inferior specimens of the same article. About the time when you are thus far advanced 
you will be trusted with a physician's prescription ; at first, one which is plain and 
simple, for those which contain drugs of great activity are invariably dispensed by the 
principal, or by an experienced assistant. And you are to bear in mind that the dis¬ 
pensing of a physician’s prescription is no light matter: possibly the life of a fellow- 
creature may rest upon it, and certainly your success in life will very much depend upon 
the manner in which you accomplish it. Therefore, from the first, you should study to 
be cautious and accurate, neat and cleanly in this part of your duty. I shall have more 
than once again to refer to the subject of dispensing, and I have now only to recommend 
a diligent use of your time during the period of your pupilage, in which, of course, there 
are many things to be learned in connection with the trade of pharmacy, to which it is 
not within my province to refer. 
When you have mastered the routine duties of the pharmaceutical laboratory, and are 
become a skilled practical workman, you will desire to know something about the 
sciences which control those operations, in the performance of which you are now sup¬ 
posed to be proficient. But before you finally adopt any plan of study at this stage of 
your career, I would strongly urge you, if you have not already done so, to fix inflexibly 
upon that course of life which, under Providence, you are determined to pursue to the 
end. It may seem odd to some of you that I should offer such a suggestion as this when 
you are already so far on the way to become Pharmaceutical Chemists ; but I have this 
reason for doing so. It not unfrequently happens that a youth enters upon the calling 
of a Pharmaceutical Chemist simply because neither he nor his friends know very well 
what else he can be, a sort of vague and tentative choice, which is not by any means 
peculiar to pharmacy, since, indeed, every profession and trade has its number of such 
indecisive apprentices, who, pursuing their elementary avocations without a determinate 
ultimate purpose, at length become unsettled, dissatisfied, and desirous of change. Now, 
it is at this juncture, when entering upon a course of scientific study, that an irresolute 
mind is apt to wander from its first intention; and it is especially so with the student of 
pharmacy, for then begins an intercourse with the medical student, into whose path he 
is for a certain period thrown, and of whose future career he is apt to be somewhat emu¬ 
lous. It is necessary, therefore, to determine what you are to be. You cannot, even 
now, enter into favourable competition with the medical student, because he has already 
reaped the advantages of a suitable preliminary education, such as you cannot now at¬ 
tain, and, therefore, in the race of professional life he would indubitably leave you far 
behind. If you allow this opportunity to pass you, your change of purpose to become a 
medical man would be still less promising; nevertheless, I have met with several instances 
of pharmaceutical students entering, long after the periods of their apprenticeships, upon 
the study of Materia Medica, quite undetermined as to whether they would continue as 
Pharmaceutical Chemists, or would endeavour gradually to acquire the title and privi¬ 
leges of medical practitioners. If you were to ask my opinion of such changes, I should 
tell you that I consider them very unsatisfactory to the person chiefly interested. If his 
talents be insufficient for a Pharmaceutical Chemist, he will seek in vain to apply them 
to the study of medicine; if his qualities entitle him to a position in the higher ranks of 
the learned world, he will injure himself by leaving that calling in which he has already 
to a certain extent distinguished himself, to enter upon one in which, considering the 
many disadvantages v» hich would attend him, he could scarcely hope to attain more than a 
barely respectable position; and if the change be prompted by a restless, wandering, 
untutored disposition, he would be out of place everywhere. But there is afar weightier 
reason for recommending to you a steady and diligent adherence to the study of phar¬ 
macy ; namely, that the field of scientific pharmacy offers you the richest return for the 
labours which you may be disposed to bestow upon it. I may be permitted to say, with¬ 
out the smallest disparagement to those able men who have worked in it, or to those 
