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PHARMACEUTICAL MEETING, EDINBURGH. 
sciences already enumerated, in so far as they relate to medicines. It is the practical ap¬ 
plication of these sciences to the art of pharmacy, the hiving of the sweets obtained by an 
excursion into the floriage of the collateral sciences. The student of Materia Medica 
must be constantly dropping in upon his friends the chemist, the botanist, and the toxi¬ 
cologist, and, when he meets with anything of interest to him, he must carry it oif to 
his own laboratory, and there endeavour to work it up into a suitable form for practical 
application. They are our pioneers, and we could not get on without them. But Materia 
Medica has another aspect, it is not only associated with pharmacy, but also with thera¬ 
peutics ; that is to say, on the one hand, it practically applies the sciences already enu¬ 
merated to the art of pharmacy, whilst, on the other, it applies the products of pharmacy 
to the art of healing. Now, I think that the pharmaceutical student should also devote 
a little attention to the latter department of Materia Medica, as viewed from the phar¬ 
maceutical, but not from the medical side of the question. By this, I mean that the 
pharmaceutical student ought to be acquainted with the doses, actions, and uses of me¬ 
dicines so far as to be able to explain in an intelligible manner the effects to be antici¬ 
pated from the employment of any medicine in a given quantity ; and he ought also to 
be prepared to meet any emergency arising from wilful or accidental poisoning. But 
—and I shall return to this subject by-and-by—it is entirely beyond his province to at¬ 
tempt, as a profession, the application of any medicine, however simple, to any ailment 
however apparently trifling. Materia Medica will also teach you the practical application 
of chemistry and botany to the recognition, selection, collection, cultivation, preparation, 
preservation, testing, and so forth, of drugs. On a previous occasion I mentioned to you 
my views respecting the teaching of pharmacy on a more extensive basis than can be 
undertaken either in connection with Materia Medica, or with any of the sciences previ¬ 
ously enumerated, and, therefore, I need not dwell upon the subject of a higher class 
pharmaceutical education. 
I have but little to say with respect to your non-essential or optional studies; it is a 
question for each of you to determine for himself how he can most satisfactorily and 
pleasantly employ his leisure hours with the object of improving his social as well as 
his professional status. I may suggest, however, that, if your opportunities serve for it, 
you would not be the worse of knowing something about the structure and functions of 
the human body in health, and that a course of general descriptive anatomy, and one of 
physiology, might be followed with advantage as means of mental culture. As a re¬ 
creative study, I would also commend to you the microscope, by means of which you can 
obtain both pleasure and instruction in many departments of natural science. One thing 
I would caution you against, namely, dabbling in the strictly medical subjects of educa¬ 
tion. When you remember that medical men of long experience are fain to exclaim, 
“How much still remains to be learned !” you will at once admit that your very limited 
opportunity of inquiry into medical subjects could only yield you an unsafe acquaintance 
with them, and it is quite certain that you would end in a deficiency of pharmaceutical 
knowledge without acquiring a proficiency in things medical. 
Having at length passed through your period of study, and having become a fully 
qualified member of your profession, we may glance for a moment at your relations, 
duties, and privileges as such. Your position as a pharmaceutical chemist will depend 
very much upon your individual merits, but, apart from these, you are entitled, as a 
member of a learned society, to take rank in the assemblies of the scientific world; and 
the more countenance you lend, the more assistance you afford, to the Pharmaceutical 
Society', to your Pharmaceutical Conferences, and to your occasional local meetings, 
the greater will be your advancement as a body, and the more evident will be the reflex 
effect of this upon sach of you personally. I have sometimes heard it murmured that 
it is of no use to belong to the Pharmaceutical Society, that it costs money, and that 
you derive no benefit from it. This is simply regarding your subscription to the 
society in the light of a tax. All taxes, regarded as such, are obnoxious, and it is not 
until you reflect upon the other side of the equation, and find that you are amply com¬ 
pensated, that you pay them cheerfully. One tax collector after another calls at your 
house, and you think of taxes and pay them grudgingly; but you go out of doors, and 
you find your streets cleaned, your lamps lighted, your house guarded, your poor fed, 
clothed, and housed, and your nation protected from invasion and powerful to defend 
every good cause, and then a gleam of satisfaction lights up your countenance as you 
say within yourself, I helped to do all this. So it is also with respect to learned societies 
VOL. VII. Y 
