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PHARMACEUTICAL MEETING, EDINBURGH. 
they must have machinery and their mechanism must be kept employed, so that those 
who would support them must not only subscribe to their capita], but must also volunteer 
occasional services; and then, when he sees that by such means his calling is advanced 
and his interests are protected, that ignorance is instructed, that intolerance is restrained, 
that weakness is protected, and that jealousy gives place to laudable emulation, each 
contributor will congratulate himself upon the part which he has been privileged to 
perform in his own department. You take rank in social life according to your religious 
and moral character, and there is no better evidence of this than the company in which 
you are found; so also in your professional life, your success will depend very much 
upon your individual talents and exertions, but not a little also upon the reputation of 
the body to which you belong, which, if you honour and support, will, in return, shed 
upon you a lustre such as the world cannot fail to appreciate and respect. 
It is your privilege as a Pharmaceutical Chemist, moreover, to derive from the public 
a substantial return not merely as a bare profit upon the drugs contained in a physician’s 
prescription, but something more as the requital of services for the performance of 
which your education was in the first place expensive, and upon the performance of 
which you bestowed much anxious thought. For the dispensing of a prescription is 
not a matter of manual labour and dexterity only; there is frequently a good deal 
left to the judgment and taste of the dispenser, and in order to qualify himself for the 
fulfilment of his share in the recovery of the sick, he must, like the physician with 
whom he is co-operating, study day by day, independently of prescriptions, to bring his 
art to the highest state of perfection. And for this he should receive an adequate re¬ 
muneration. 
And this brings me, lastly, to the brief consideration of your relations as a Pharma¬ 
ceutical Chemist, on the one hand towards the sick, and on the other towards the physi¬ 
cian. The patient demands at your hands the means which, in the opinion of his medi¬ 
cal adviser, are capable either of removing his disease, or at least of alleviating his 
distressing symptoms. When the physician has done all that lies in his power he has 
really done nothing at all for the relief of his patient, if medicines be necessary, until 
he obtains your assistance. He is like an architect, who can only put a house upon 
paper, and who requires the aid of the builder to give effect to his designs. Let the 
physician be ever so skilful and careful, all his attention will be unavailing unless he be 
supported by your attainments as a Pharmaceutical Chemist. If, therefore, you are 
careless in dispensing the prescription, or if you were to employ materials of inferior 
quality, you would not only be neglecting your own duty but you would frustrate the 
■endeavours of the physician also. Mark, then, what I was almost going to term your 
awful responsibility, and let it be your fixed determination through life to discharge 
the functions of your important stewardship with unswerving rectitude. You can 
scarcely guess how many questions a medical man has to put to himself before he dares 
to acknowledge his belief that any improvement in his patient is due to his prescription. 
There are many disturbing causes of a physiological and pathological character, as well 
as others of an external kind, which I need not explain to you ; and how very sad it 
would be if he were obliged to add to these others due to the culpable negligence, I 
will not say the dishonesty, of the dispenser. But it is also to be borne in mind that 
the most scrupulous Pharmaceutical Chemist may unwittingly defeat the objects of the 
physician by employing articles which he believes to be of the best, but which, although 
possessing all the external features of pure drugs, may be inert either from faulty pre¬ 
paration, or in consequence of the plants from which they were made having been col¬ 
lected at a wrong season, or from some other cause. How much, then, depends upon 
your skill in detecting adulterations, your persevering industry and moral rectitude in 
maintaining your stock at a high standard of purity, your carefulness in separating the 
exact quantities prescribed, and in rendering them into the required forms; in short, 
upon your intelligence, activity, industry, caution, and integrity! And what better 
.proof can there be that you possess all these qualifications than that you are members 
of a distinguished society whose interests it should be your chief aim to promote, and 
whose reputatiou you should cherish as your own ? 
From w'hat I have already said you will also gather some ideas of your relationship to 
the medical profession. I would earnestly recommend you to cultivate a good feeling 
towards medical men; for although, as I have said at the outset, I am not speaking in 
the name of the profession, still I can venture to affirm that the wish of every physician 
