ON PHARMACEUTICAL RESPONSIBILITY AND REMUNERATION. 12] 
to such chemist, and inquire how much he had charged. He always received this in¬ 
formation at once, and had pleasure in giving similar replies to such queries when put 
to himself. He invited those present to offer any remarks upon the interesting paper 
to which they had listened. 
Mr. Schacht (Clifton) said that this question of prices had always appeared to him 
to be one of morals rather than anything else, and he did not see how they could arrive 
at any practical result from a discussion of the question. 
Mr. Coofee alluded to the case of a person who sold 12>\d. patent medicines at 10 \d., 
and queried whether the marking of prices charged upon prescriptions would not induce 
such persons to undersell. 
Mr. Stoddakt (Bristol) said that his own experience went to show that lowering the 
price of a medicine produced no increase in its sale, but on the contrary, might diminish 
it. When a prescription which should be charged 2s. was brought to him after being 
previously prepared by a “cutting” chemist for fifteenpence, he handed it back to the 
patient, stating that as a reason. Almost invariably he was requested to prepare it, and 
found his customer come again. 
Mr. Balkwill (Plymouth) said that, at Plymouth, many of the chemists agreed upon 
a price-mark and used it on each prescription. When any one violated the rule, they 
changed the mark. The liability for damages in case of accident should not be over¬ 
looked, since very heavy amounts had been recovered from some of their brethren. He 
thought that the position of chemists with regard to public hospitals might be improved 
if the medical staff would avail themselves of the experience of drugs possessed by phar¬ 
macists. 
Mr. Payne (Wallingford) agreed that many of their prices were too low and unre¬ 
munerating, as had been pointed out by Mr. Hampson in a recent paper given before 
the Manchester Chemists’ Association. He thought the cheaper labour of apprentices 
was one reason why this was the case, in country places, where they were ordinarily 
employed instead of assistants. 
Mr. Brady (Newcastle-on-Tyne) said that the price-list which he most frequently 
met with was that agreed to by the chemists of Edinburgh, and which had become the 
standard for a district of considerable extent, since the medical celebrity of Edinburgh 
was great. The scale of prices for dispensing was thought by many to t>e unnecessarily 
low, and he hoped it was correctly rumoured that it was likely to be raised. There was 
a mitigating circumstance in the fact that medical men in Edinburgh did not dispense 
their own prescriptions, and those going into the hands of the chemists were largely in 
excess of those of any other place he knew. Referring to Mr. Balkwill’s remarks as to 
the representation of pharmacists on hospital boards, he (Mr. Brady) was much inter¬ 
ested in the question. Now that the Legislature had sanctioned Pharmacy as a pro¬ 
fession, equally with medicine and surgery, he thought that no staff of a hospital could 
be considered complete unless this third estate was represented upon it. He must also 
point out how municipal and other local bodies directly caused the dispensing of prescrip¬ 
tions by surgeons rather than by chemists. He knew one small city in which no 
medical men dispensed their own medicines, excepting those who were compelled to do 
it |by the Boards of Poor Law Guardians from whom they hold their appointments. 
This was a significant fact, and the subject one upon which an eye should be kept. At 
the same time, violent changes were not to be expected, since medical men had been 
generally their own dispensers up to a comparatively recent period. It was to the 
younger race of surgeons that they must look for the new regime , since it was easy to 
commence without dispensing, but not so easy to alter the old system when it had once 
been introduced. 
Mr. Savage (Brighton) said that he could not help calling attention to the gratuitous 
distribution of medicines at hospitals to persons quite able to pay for them. He in¬ 
stanced a case which occurred at the Sussex County Hospital, where a clergyman and 
his wife and daughter had received gratuitous medicines, the Board being obliged to 
stop these after due investigation. 
Mr. Commans (Bath) said in reference to a fixed scale of prices, that he knew how 
much locality and other circumstances must affect it, but he hoped that they would 
attempt to follow a standard as far as they could. 
Mr. Knapman (Exeter) acknowledged the obligations of the meeting to Mr. Smith 
for his interesting paper, and he wished that he could go further and say that the course 
