274 
BRITISH PHARMACEUTICAL CONFERENCE. 
would render the gentlemen who passed them competent and safe persons to be 
entrusted with the important functions they undertook in becoming pharma¬ 
ceutical chemists. It would obviously be out of place here for him to go into 
details, or to say anything to forestall the report which it would be his duty to 
make to the Privy Council ; but he might, without impropriety, observe that 
he had seen with satisfaction the practical and searching manner in which the 
examinations were conducted, and he had no doubt that, as time went on and 
the Society was able to increase the stringency of the curriculum, the results of 
the examinations would become more and more important. He must here refer 
to one point which had been touched upon by Mr. Deane in his address,—he 
meant the necessity for a certain amount of classical knowledge. Latin at least 
was indispensable in a strictly business point of view for pharmaceutists, espe¬ 
cially as the members of the profession to which he had the honour to belong 
did not always write so legibly as could be desired. He did not know how they 
had contrived to collect such a number of almost illegible prescriptions as he 
had seen in that building, but it certainly required a very competent acquaint¬ 
ance with Latin to decipher them. Pharmacy, though not strictly a branch of 
the medical profession, was a most important auxiliary to the great art of heal¬ 
ing ; and he believed that the additional powers and responsibilities recently 
conferred upon the Pharmaceutical Society had been given just at the right 
time. Their voluntary examinations had already" raised the standard of phar¬ 
maceutical knowledge, and, now that these had been rendered compulsory, 
there was every prospect that the higher standard would become general through¬ 
out the country. And, lastly, he must say a word on behalf of his own profes¬ 
sion. The importance of having prescriptions correctly prepared was very 
great; but although, as long as he had been in practice, there had always been 
houses, especially in London, where physicians could be certain of having their 
intentions carried out, it was not until comparatively recent times that they 
could place any such reliance on chemists in country places. He had always 
thought it hard that country medical practitioners should be compelled, after a 
long day's round of attendance on the sick, to sit down on their return home 
to dispense their own medicines ; and he believed there was a growing disincli¬ 
nation among medical men to go through this drudgery themselves, and an 
increasing desire to be able to entrust it to chemists and druggists. He hoped, 
therefore, in due time, to see in every town and in all but the smallest villages 
a properly-qualified dispenser of medicines, to whom the medical men could 
safely delegate the making-up of their prescriptions. 
Mr. Deane having briefly acknowledged the compliment paid him, the meet¬ 
ing separated. 
BRITISH PHARMACEUTICAL CONFERENCE. 
A meeting of the Executive Committee was held at 17, Bloomsbury Square, 
on the evening of Tuesday, Oct. 5th; Mr. J. Abraham, Vice-President, in 
the chair. 
Several new Members were elected. 
Messrs. Carteighe, Groves, Ilanbury, Ince, and Stoddart, were elected a 
Committee of Publication for the ‘ Year-book of Pharmacy,’ to be published in 
1870. 
Mr. J. C. Brough was elected Editor of the ‘ Year-book,’ at a salary of £100. 
The Committee accepted in trust Mr. Hills’ liberal donation of fifty guineas, 
for the purchase of books for the libraries of chemists’ associations in towns 
