November 23, 1872] THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
415 
that it was in general practised empirically, and was 
often confounded with sorcery and witchcraft. .No laws 
existed for the protection of the public from ignorant 
practitioners, andit was not until the year 1511 that in this 
country the practice ofthe profession was regulated bylaw. 
It is uncertain what time physicians gave up practising 
pharmacy, but we find that in 1617 the apothecaries, 
who were previously incorporated with the grocers, were 
separated from the latter, and obtained a charter which 
gave them the privileges of practising pharmacy, viz., 
the selling of drugs, and the preparing and compound¬ 
ing of medicines according to the physicians’ orders and 
instructions. The first pharmacopoeia was published by 
the college in 1618, and subsequent editions at various 
times, until we reach the last, and, I believe, the best 
that has been yet published, the 1867 British Pharma¬ 
copoeia. The Edinburgh and Dublin Colleges also pub¬ 
lished pharmacopoeias, but in the year 1864 a pharma¬ 
copoeia was published that superseded the three phar¬ 
macopoeias then in use, the London, Dublin, and Edin¬ 
burgh, called the British Pharmacopoeia, and which did 
away with the uncertainties and anxieties that so often 
troubled us, as to how a prescription was to be dispensed 
(not knowing by whom or where it was written) when 
it contained a medicine that was ordered to be prepared of 
different strengths by the different colleges. On the 
18th of February, 1843, the Pharmaceutical Society of 
Great Britain became a corporate body, and in 1868 ob¬ 
tained from Parliament the object for which they had so 
striven and worked, the compulsory education of all 
who practise pharmacy on their own account. 
The law has now said that every one who keeps open 
•shop for the sale of such articles as are enumerated in 
certain schedules must pass an examination ;. and al¬ 
though it does not prevent any one from keeping open 
shop for the sale of three-fourths of what we do sell, 
HEtill the one-fourth that is prohibited from being sold by 
any one who has not acquired the necessary privilege 
for selling is a total preventive to any one following the 
business of a pharmaceutical chemist. 
As the law has said in its wisdom that all who keep 
open shop must pass an examination, I say before such 
'examination can be passed, it is an essential requisite 
that ever} 7- one must be educated, and the first thing, 
therefore, for any one going into the business to do is to 
begin to acquire the necessary education. 
There are many schemes put forth for educating 
future pharmacists, and which have been fully ex¬ 
plained and discussed in the Pharmaceutical Journal ; 
•they all have their friends and admirers, and I 
dare say they might be brought into practical work¬ 
ing order. Still, I hold that it is the duty of an appren¬ 
tice to pay for his own education, and that good prac¬ 
tical pharmaceutical chemists can be made if young men 
will themselves study and make use of the advantages 
offered by such associations as this we are now met to 
inaugurate, with the practical training behind the coun¬ 
ter, if with the help thus given they help themselves. Cer¬ 
tainly they do not pretend to make a young man a 
pharmacist without his own help, but they offer rooms 
to read in, the [assistance, help, advice, goodwill, and 
-experience of their seniors, and, I trust, also, some prac¬ 
tical and theoretical instruction in chemistry, phar¬ 
macy, materia medica, and botany that is not always 
met with behind the counter. 
I wish to bring before your notice the desirability 
and the necessity of not taking apprentices without 
their having first passed the Preliminary examination, 
or, at any rate, it being made an essential feature in 
ihe agreement that it has to be passed within three, or 
at the latest, twelve months after entering upon their 
apprenticeship. 
I think you will at once see the force of this when 
I say that a‘ youth fnjsh from school is in a much better 
position with everything fresh in his memory to pass such 
an examination, than when he has been from school, 
say, two to three years, and perhaps forgot a good deal of 
what he did know. It also would have the effect,— 
which is the thing desired and inculcated by every one 
who wishes to see pharmacy occupy its proper position in 
our land,—of weeding out the uneducated, keeping'out 
of our ranks those whose education has not fitted them for 
entering them, thus giving tone to, and elevating the 
whole body also. It will have the effect of lessening in 
the course of time the great number of businesses that 
at the present time abound, by putting greater difficulties 
in the way of, and increasing the cost to, those who 
wish to practise pharmacy, and eventually making 
our businesses more remunerative by their becoming 
so much larger. The time of the youth is taken up 
with the preliminary studies, if he does not pass before 
he enters, or immediately after, to the total exclu¬ 
sion of what he ought to be doing so as to enable him 
to get through his Minor after serving his apprentice¬ 
ship. 
In the few words more I have to say, I wish spe¬ 
cially to address the youths whom I now see here, 
and for whose benefit this association has been chiefly 
got up. I wish to impress upon them the necessity of 
studying during their apprenticeship ; not in a random 
way, but by hard downright work, being in earnest and 
determined to overcome all difliculties, using all the 
spare time that they have for the furtherance of then- 
studies. And here I would remind them that they may 
consider themselves well off, as they will find very few 
towns in England that adopt such an early closing hour 
as we do here, which_they will find a great boon, and as 
such, should prize it. 
The examinations comprise a knowledge of che¬ 
mistry, pharmacy, botany, materia medica, with the 
practical manipulation of the laboratory and dispensing 
counter; also the modes of ascertaining the strength 
and purity of drugs, the tests and antidotes, for poisons, 
the doses of ordinary medicines and an acquaintance with 
the language of prescriptions. Rather a formidable pro¬ 
gramme, I fancy I hear my young friends say ; but it is 
a programme that must be mastered by every one who 
wishes to pursue the calling of pharmacy and aspires to 
be in business for himself. And I can assure them, if 
they will only give their time, and take for their motto 
< Labor omnia vincit ,’ they will master it. I also wish to 
impress upon them the necessity of having a regular 
routine of study, to have nights or portions of nights 
set apart for particular subjects ; say one night for che¬ 
mistry, one for materia medica, another night for botany, 
another for history or general literature, and lastly, and 
I believe of the greatest importance, one night for re¬ 
viewing what you have done in the preceding nights. 
And remember that the great secret of being successful 
and accurate as a student, next to perseverance and 
being thorough in all., your studies, is the constant 
habit of reviewing, by "which means you fix in your 
memory faithfully what you have learned. Here I 
would recomend a few books to your notice, and which, 
I think, you ought all to possess, viz., Attfield’s ‘Che¬ 
mistry,’ Oliver’s ‘ Botany,’ RoscoeV Chemistry,’ Scoresby- 
Jackson’s ‘ Materia Medica,’ Fownes’.‘ Chemistry,’ and 
Selecta e Prescriptis.’ Now you must not let those 
nights that are set apart for particular subjects be inter¬ 
fered with. Make yourselves a programme, and stick to 
it; it may be irksome at first, but if you will only 
persevere you will find you will be as anxious to 
get to your studies, and be as annoyed if you are 
interfered with, as you are for getting to your A dinner 
when you are hungry and called off before you are done. 
Practical pharmacy, not high scientific pharmacy, will 
engage a good deal of your time in the shop. I fancy 
at thfs last I hear my young friends saying, “All very 
well to say so, but, you know, we don’t get much prac¬ 
tical pharmacy in the shop.” In answer to that I sa} , 
the shop is where you will get, although at present 
you may think to the contrary, most useful knowledge, 
and that practically, which will enable you at a future 
time to manage a business either for yourself or some 
