786 
ANNUAL MEETING. 
them, should be sent out in distinctive bottles. The meaning of dispensing was com- 
pounding, taking out, and mixing anything that anybody came and asked for. . It 
was all very well to take great care when dispensing a prescription, and to put it into 
distinctive bottles, but he believed a great many of his friends and brethren in the 
country were very much more accustomed to supplying a pennyworth of laudanum, a 
pennyworth of opodeldoc, a pennyworth of oil, and a pennyworth of hartshorn, and 
mixing them together, than to making up prescriptions for liniments ; and it would 
be impossible to give to persons who came for these paltry amounts, particular shaped 
or distinctive bottles, corrugated, fluted, or sand-papered. He would, therefore, con¬ 
clude by moving : 
“That this Meeting, whilst fully recognizing the duty of every Pharmaceutical 
Chemist, and Chemist and Druggist, to take all due precautions for guarding 
against mistakes and accidents, and securing the safety of the public when deal¬ 
ing with poisons or dangerous articles, does not consider the enforced adoption 
of the proposed Regulations for keeping and dispensing poisons to be either 
necessary or desirable.” 
Mr. Yizek said he had great pleasure in seconding the amendment. He was 
somewhat surprised in taking up the Journal for the present month, to find the sub¬ 
ject was to form so material a part of the discussion, for from the very general ex¬ 
pression of feeling with respect to these proposals, he was almost in hope that the 
Council would have shelved the question altogether, seeing its impracticability. He 
now saw that this was an error of judgment on his part, inasmuch as it was compul¬ 
sory on them to bring this matter forward, being bound down by Act of Parliament 
to provide some restrictions ; but in looking through the pages of the Journal as he 
came along, he found that several Associations had sent in protests against this 
proposal, amongst others, Bradford, Leeds, Oxford, Scarborough, Manchester, Hull, 
Sheffield, Nottingham, etc. All these influential bodies and representatives of the 
trade had, after a deliberate consideration, he presumed, sent up these protests, and 
therefore, under these circumstances, he apprehended there must be a sound founda¬ 
tion for the rejection of any such rules and restrictions as were now proposed. He 
did not think that chemists, required an Act of Parliament to make them feel their 
responsibility, for whenever he took up a bottle of strychnine, he was perfectly con¬ 
scious that he virtually held in his hand the life of his customer. Only the other day 
he was in conversation with a neighbour who said to him, whenever I take down 
a bottle I feel that I have a life in my hand. Such was the feeling of any man who 
had any feeling in him. If he took down a bottle of soap liniment or of tincture of 
opium, it was the same thing, he must look at the label, and if he did not read the 
label, he was not fit to take a bottle in his hands. The sense of their moral responsi¬ 
bility was perfectly sufficient to make them use every possible precaution, and he was 
satisfied there was not a chemist in the room but took such precautions as he con¬ 
sidered necessary. Every one had his own peculiar means of providing against acci¬ 
dent, and every man had a right, and he thought was justified and far more likely to 
carry out the spirit of what was desired by using his own judgment, than by being 
bound and tied hands and feet, and having to pay servile obedience to an Act of Par¬ 
liament. Again, turning to the January number of the Journal, he found it stated 
that when the Pharmacy Bill was under discussion in the House of Commons, there 
were advocates for greater stringency, who said it would be useless to leave the power 
of declaring what were new poisons to the Council of the Pharmaceutical Society, for 
to save themselves trouble they would keep the schedule as small as possible. But 
further on, he found that precisely the opposite assertion was made, viz., that m order 
to ensure a monopoly for the chemists, the Council would be continually adding to 
the list; and in another place it was stated that those who had charge of this Bill on 
the part of the chemists would sacrifice the safety of the public to the convenience of 
the trade. On the contrary, he took it that in these proposals which were now 
before the meeting, the convenience of the trade was being sacrificed, though not to 
the safety of the public; for he believed that when they trusted to these regulations, 
as a gentleman had said just now, and had poisons in a particular cupboard, or on a 
particular shelf, there would be no more safety than at the present time. He had a 
