ANNUAL MEETING. 
769 
surprise how few persons have been registered erroneously. So far as reliable 
information has been obtained, since the publication of the Register, (and 
it is only from such information that the Registrar can have knowledge of 
impositions practised on him) steps have been taken by the Council to erase 
names improperly inserted. In some cases it has been found necessary to insti¬ 
tute legal proceedings, as well against persons having obtained registration by 
fraud or error, as against others altogether unregistered who have been fouud 
dealing in poisons, and these proceedings, although involving both trouble and 
expense, have been attended with success. It is the manifest duty of your 
Council to protect the public, on the one hand, and the legitimate chemist on 
the other, in these matters; but, at the same time, to avoid harsh or vexatious 
prosecutions, than which nothing could tend more surely to bring the Pharmacy 
Act into disrepute. 
There has been a magisterial decision, doubtless fresh in the minds of all, in 
which a Pharmaceutical Chemist was convicted and fined for dispensing a pre¬ 
scription containing poison, without due compliance with the provisions of the 
seventeenth section of the Act. The decision of the magistrates in this case 
was so obviously opposed to the whole spirit of the Pharmacy Act, so calculated 
if unchallenged to inflict hardship and injustice on dispensers, that your Council, 
as guardians of the whole trade, as well as trustees for the public, at once re¬ 
solved to have the question brought before higher authority, and have satis¬ 
faction in learning that the conviction was quashed by the Court of Queen’s 
Bench. 
With regard to the Benevolent Fund, one of the primary objects for which 
the Society was called into existence, your Council has to regret that, not¬ 
withstanding the immensely enlarged community admitted to the benefits of 
this fund by the operations of the Pharmacy Act, only a very small addition has 
been made to the list of annual contributors. The increased number of persons 
eligible to participate in this fund necessitates an enlarged liberality towards its 
exchequer ; but unfortunately your Council has not seen the augmentation 
which its sanguine hopes led it to anticipate. Of the balance in the hands of 
the Treasurer at the end of 1869, the sum of £500 has been invested ; and in 
view of the desirability for electing one fresh annuitant at least at the next 
usual period for election, your Council has ordered the transfer of £500 from 
the General Fund, to the credit of the Benevolent Fund Account; and it is 
hoped that this appropriation of the Society’s funds will lead to a large and 
hearty response from chemists and druggists generally. 
During the past year an International Congress of Pharmaceutical Socie¬ 
ties and Unions was convened at Vienna, and, in response to the invitation of 
the Executive, your Council sent your President and Professor Redwood to re¬ 
present British Pharmacy. From the report of these gentlemen it would appear 
that their mission has been conducive to a cordial reciprocity of feeling between 
foreign Societies and our own, and by affording an opportunity of personal 
interchange of views and an explanation of the progress of Pharmacy in Great 
Britain, has created a higher appreciation of the improved position—social and 
political—acquired by Pharmacy in this country. 
Iu compliance with a generally expressed wish, a very material alteration 
in the character and arrangements of the Annual Conversazione has been made 
this year. Ladies have been invited, to accommodate whom with comfort the 
rooms in the Society’s house are wholly inadequate. 
Permission has consequently been sought, and most courteously and promptly 
granted by the Lords of Committee of Council on Education to use the rooms 
of the South Kensington Museum, than which no more appropriate building 
could have been selected, where, amidst a vast assemblage of objects of the 
greatest interest and beauty, the Members of the Society may enjoy the special 
