INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
Ill 
the working of the Act in the practical carrying on of business. Has it proved 
a safeguard and benefit to the public ? Have its provisions with regard to the 
sale of poisons been easily complied with, or have they been found irksome, or 
even impracticable? To these questions, it is to be expected, the answers will 
be very various, owing to the diverse character of the chemists’ businesses on 
which the law will bear. Speaking from my own experience, I may say that 
in the city of London there has been very little difficulty in complying with 
the requirements of the Pharmacy Act, and that its tendency has been ad¬ 
vantageous to public safety and convenience. On the subject of Registration 
and the other important provisions of the Act, I will now say nothing; but I 
must make a passing allusion to the very great stimulus to improved education 
which such a measure will infallibly prove. Its effects are already apparent: 
—in no previous year have the laboratories at Bloomsbury Square been filled 
with more numerous and intelligent students; and though I know that some 
exception may be taken to one class of our examinations on the ground of their 
lenient character, it is no insignificant fact that 600 persons have passed these 
ordeals in the house of the Pharmaceutical Society during the first six months 
of the present year. 
With regard to the sale of poisons it is not a little remarkable that in this 
country no law should have been in force to restrain or regulate it, until the 
Arsenic Act was passed in the year 1851. Contrast this with the state of things 
in France, where so far back as a.d. 1353, nearly five hundred years before, a 
law was passed to regulale the profession of apothecary and herbalist, and to 
subject the shops of such persons to inspection. By this law it was enacted, 
that they should not sell or deliver any dangerous poisonous medicine or 
such as would occasion abortion, whether simple or compound, to any 
person out of the pale of the Christian faith or to any person to have the 
same if they did not well know that he was a master, or learned person, or 
expert in the science of medicine and well known, the which they should 
judge in their conscience sufficient, that it was by express command of a 
physician who had sent for such medicines and as above is said * 
The necessity of subjecting a buyer to something like a theological examina¬ 
tion may seem now-a-days rather unpractical, but not impossible if intended, as 
I think it was, to be enforced against Jews who in the middle ages were dis¬ 
tinguished by their dress, and were as is well known, the objects of every kind 
of persecution and opprobrious distinction. I he same law contains other curious 
provisions, some of which descend to minute particulars, as the following. 
* * * * and also that the medicinal electuaries, or opiates, or other 
medicines liable to be long kept, made and put into pots or other suitable 
vessels, shall be labelled with the year and month when confected, and that 
they shall sell the same at a loyal, just and moderate price and with just 
regard to variation in the currency # # # * and also that when¬ 
ever required, they shall weigh all their medicines and not deliver them by 
ompgS. 
In the previous reign, that of Philippes de Valois, an injunction concerning 
the apothecaries of Paris was addressed by the king to the provost of the city, 
requiring that he should compel the apothecaries to show their medicine^ to the 
Masters of the Faculty of Medicine, that the latter might judge of their purity 
and good condition.^ 
* These laws are thus quoted in the llecueil General cles Anciennes Lois 1 rangaises pax 
Decrusy, Isambert et Jourdan, Tome IV. pp. 679-681 and p. 424. 
“ Ordonnance suv l’exercise de la profession d’apothicaxre et d herbier, et qui les soumet a la 
“visite”—Paris, aout, 1353. . . „ 
“ Jehan, par la grace de Dicu, roy de France; stjavoir faisons a tous presens et avemr 
*# * * * et qu’il ne vendront, ne bailleront aucune medecine venimeuse penlleuse, cu qui 
