OF TIIE PHARMACEUTICAL SOCIETY. 
591 
is always pleasant to meet old friends, but also because we have been able oil 
each occasion to congratulate ourselves on the progress of the Society in which 
we are so much interested,—a progress repaying us for all the time and labour 
we give to its interests. 
There was a time when that progress seemed doubtful; but warned rather 
than dismayed by the “ slack,’ 1 we never abated one jot in our efforts. It 
might be, too, that in losing our great Captain, the man who launched our 
bark and steered her successfully through early dangers into mid-channel, 
we all felt the greater necessity for both united and individual exertion, and so 
were ready at the flood-tide to make such headway as I think would have satisfied 
even him, whose motto in Pharmaceutical matters was always “ onward.” 
Well, Gentlemen, it may possibly be remembered by some of you, that when 
we met here last year we were in the midst of our exertions to obtain an ex¬ 
tended Act of Parliament which would have gone far towards completing the 
work on which, for a quarter of a century, we have been engaged. I was very 
sanguine then, and thought the goal was in sight; it seemed to me that the 
time had arrived at which the House of Commons would recognize the dif¬ 
ference between “free-trade” in matters of ordinary buying and selling, which 
had done so much to benefit the public, and free-trade in pharmacy, which 
without any counterbalancing advantage deprived the public of one great ele¬ 
ment of safety : 1 mean, the educational qualification of dispensers of medicine. 
The Medical Council had declared such a qualification necessary, and had pro¬ 
posed to enforce it by an addition to their own Act. I he Medical Boards in 
governmental departments had refused to entrust the dispensing for the army 
to other than those who could produce certificates of qualification from the 
Board of Examiners appointed under the Pharmacy Act. The House of Com¬ 
mons had been loud in their recognition of the necessity on the second reading 
of our Bill. And witnesses of the highest authority had been clear and unani¬ 
mous on the subject in giving their evidence before the Select Committee 
appointed by the House of Commons to investigate the matter. 
1 Such was the state of the case when we met here last May. But I nad been 
too sanguine of success. The Committee which had heard the witnesses came 
to a decision in a great degree opposed to their evidence ; affirming only that 
dealers in poisons should be “ examined and registered.” I must confess to a 
feeliim of disappointment at this result, but to no disheartenment. I regard 
my expectation only as deferred. I think it easy to prove that if the man who 
only sells poisons should be educated, a still greater necessity exists for quali¬ 
fication in one wdio compounds them, and therefore I believe that sooner or 
later that necessity will be recognized by Government. .... 
For the moment the question of Pharmaceutical legislation is m abeyance; 
but I would urge you all to keep it in remembrance. Another session of 
Parliament will probably bring us into action again, and whenever we do find 
the opportunity to go on, 1 for one shall go to the work m the spirit, as 
I believe, of the founders of our Society,—of Jacob Bell, to whom I have 
already alluded,—with a firm conviction that the Pharmaceutical Society 
was intended to embrace all worthy members of the Pharmaceutical profession, 
and that until it does so it will fail fully and perfectly to effect its object, 
—the advancement of Chemistry and Pharmacy to their proper rank m this 
C °Now Gentlemen, I fear that in the presence only of those who have recognized 
the necessity for education, and given proof of that recognition in the only two 
ways open to us,—the elder by subscription, the younger by examination, 
becoming members of this which is but a voluntary Society, I may lay myself 
open to "the charge of undervaluing it. Nothing could, 1 assure you, be more 
unjust. No man values that membership more highly than I do ; it has brougnt 
