October 19, 1872.] 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
311 
institution, but also by their having spent an enormous 
sum of money on education—a sum amounting to over 
£ 100 , 000 . 
The President: Is that the gross sum expended ? 
Mr. Schacht: Yes. 
The President: The receipts from students were not 
equal to that. 
Mr. Giles : That is not the balance of expenditure 
over returns. 
Mr. Schacht said he quoted it as the gross expendi¬ 
ture of the Society in this direction, and his contention 
was that—so large an expenditure could not have occurred 
unless the principle of which he was speaking had been 
adopted. If the Society’s duties were now declared no 
longer to include an educational department, a large 
portion of their invested funds would become unproduc¬ 
tive capital; it would involve the necessity of dismissing 
their professors ; handing over the institution in Blooms¬ 
bury Square to the highest bidder; discontinuing all 
connection with the Pharmaceutical Journal—another 
great means of instruction—and then, perhaps, they 
might reduce the subscriptions of members to, say 2s. 6f/., 
which indeed would be quite sufficient. He thought 
that would be a somewhat revolutionary proceeding, 
though it need not frighten them; it was a perfectly 
logical position, and one for which a great deal might 
be said. There was another idea which he was sorry 
to say had received a considerable amount of support. 
Many who seemed to go with them so far as to think it 
would be a mistake, certainly at present, to close the con¬ 
nection of the Pharmaceutical Society with education in 
the abstract, dissented from them when they ventured 
to move it out of the establishment in London. The 
position thus assumed appeared to him to be much like 
this,—they admit the right and duty of the Pharmaceu¬ 
tical Society to educate, but endeavour to concentrate 
all their power in strengthening and fostering education 
at the central establishment only. In his opinion this 
was open to greater objections than the other doctrine. 
For himself he declared distinctly that it was the duty 
of the Pharmaceutical Society to do the best it could 
to assist education. It was right and proper for the 
Society to do so if on no other ground than that they 
had gone to Parliament announcing a certain standard 
of qualification, and obtaining a legal power to refuse 
the right to practise in the trade to all that failed to reach 
this standard. Therefore, they should be prepared to 
show that they had made corresponding efforts to supply 
the opportunities for the acquisition of those qualifica¬ 
tions. Another set of arguments was what might be 
called the confederacy line of argument, and ran some¬ 
what in this direction : It was said, let the pharma¬ 
cists teach their apprentices themselves and cease 
to look to the Pharmaceutical Society for aid in 
so doing. No doubt a very large number of masters 
were qualified to teach their apprentices the sciences as 
well as the practical management of the shop. But it 
might not be convenient nor advantageous for them to 
do so, and it struck him that the best qualified men in the 
business would find it more to their own and their 
pupils’ interest not to undertake to teach them the two 
sciences of chemistry and botany, but to provide this 
teaching for them away from home. Again, the entire 
income and power of the Association were gathered from 
the length and breadth of the land, and by the abstract 
rule of right and justice, its benefits should be dispersed 
on an equally broad principle. To gather from the many 
and lavish on the few,—to develope high scientific cul¬ 
ture in a few, and to leave the many uncared for,—must 
be wrong under any circumstances, and especially 
wrong in the case of an organization that had itself set 
the standard of legal qualification. They could all rejoice 
in the fact that men like Professor Redwood, Professor 
Bentley, Professor Attfield and Dr. Tilden had sprung 
from their body, but they ought rather to rejoice could 
they succeed in elevating the average chemist and drug¬ 
gist by such an education as would enable him to pass 
the required examinations creditably. Whether they 
agreed with him remained to be seen by the vote he 
asked them to give ; and allowing him for one moment 
to suppose that they did, he would pass on for a few minutes 
to the question they were necessarily thinking of, viz. r 
the next step in the process. Supposing it granted that 
the Pharmaceutical Society ought to promote scientific 
education amongst the trade generally throughout the- 
country various methods suggested themselves. Their 
President had briefly but with very good judgment 
summarised the general opinions on the subject. Briefly,, 
there was the process advocated by Professor Redwood,, 
which, seeking for a word to characterize it, he should call 
the process of endowment. Then he thought there were 
only two alternative schemes, consisting of that generally 
recognized as proceeding from Mr. Reynolds, and that 
which bore his own name, and which he would call, for 
distinction sake, payment for results. It seemed to him 
that the notion of endowment was, with all respect to its 
origin, a professor’s idea completely, and one which he 
did not think would be generally acceptable to the other 
side of the community, for in the first place they had 
no stock from which the endowments could come. The 
funded property of the Pharmaceutical Society amounted 
to a few thousands—£14,000. £100 per annum repre¬ 
sented £3000 so that £14,000 would not go far in en¬ 
dowments. In the next place having endowed, they 
parted with all management of the fund. Possibly this 
difficulty might be in part met by a carefully devised 
project, but the chances were that having parted with 
their money they would lose all control over it; and in 
what respect, supposing the scheme to be well conducted, 
it excelled that of subsidizing, which the Professor regarded 
in such an unfavourable light, he could not imagine. 
Subsidizing left untouched the capital—its resources 
were the current income of the Association, and as long 
as the Association lived it came in, and when it died its 
duties died with it. Subsidizing too presents this argu¬ 
ment, that it need not be given unless it be supposed to 
be earned; you give on the year’s experience, while if 
you endow you give for fifty years hence, of which time- 
you know nothing and can form no opinion. As regards 
Mr. Reynolds’ scheme, it was a kind of multiplication 
of Bloomsbury Squares throughout the country ; and 
though there were not many objections in his mind to 
this in principle, there were many in respect of the de¬ 
tails. It was an extremely difficult matter to arrange 
and work, for every scheme and application would have 
to be judged by a different set of individuals from yeau- 
to year, and no recognized principle could be carried 
out excepting by the imposition of a very rigid set of 
regulations, the first attempt to impose which had dis¬ 
gusted the authors of the scheme. With regard to his 
own scheme, he considered it open to none of the ob¬ 
jections he had named ; because, as he had ventured to 
say at Brighton, not a single sixpence would be ex¬ 
pended unless earned. The process leaves the indivi¬ 
dual organization to manage its own affairs exactly as 
it may think best adapted to the circumstances of tho 
locality. It merely helped those who worked to recover 
part of the money cost without imposing any more than 
the simplest regulations on local institutions. They 
had seen it working most satisfactorily under Government 
management at the School of Mines in their own city, 
and no doubt elsewhere. Consequently he was still 
of opinion that it was the duty of the Pharmaceutical) 
Society to aid in scientific pharmaceutical education, 
as broadly as possible, and he knew of no better scheme- 
of distribution than that founded upon the principle ot 
payment for results. 
The President remarked that perhaps he might be 
allowed to say that it appeared to him the question of 
the entire giving up any control over education on the 
part of the Pharmaceutical Society was not quite what 
would seem to be indicated by those to whom Mr. Schacht 
