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THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
933 
given their very best consideration to the question. No 
one could read the report and see the number of attend¬ 
ances, recently given in the Journal, without seeing that 
those gentlemen had not regarded their position as 
a sinecure, but that they had gone into it as gentle¬ 
men who w r ere prepared to do their best. And as 
they had found when they came to approach the diffi¬ 
culties which had been so graphically pointed out by 
Mr. Pickering, so these gentlemen on the Council, when 
they came to grapple with them, found that practically 
very great difficulties did exist, which, with all their judg¬ 
ment and determination, they could not successfully over¬ 
come. He regarded the Report as highly satisfactory on 
the whole ; and looking at it in that way, he thought the 
whole trade ought to congratulate themselves upon it. No 
doubt they were not in a perfect condition, and they had 
many grievances. Much was said about the prosecution 
of parties who infringed the law, and of putting down 
those who undersold and kept their shops open late at 
night, and all that. He wished they could do it, but they 
could not. He thought it a very wise suggestion which 
had come from the chair, that each individual should in 
his own neighbourhood adopt such arrangements as were 
best suited to it, and endeavour to give to the body in¬ 
dividually a status and power which it could not possess 
as a whole. Those in the west could not legislate for those 
in the east, but those in the east and in the west too could 
step out of their own business and call upon their neigh¬ 
bour, and reason with him either as to keeping open 
till eleven o’clock at night, or selling a mixture at 8cT. for 
which he ought to charge Is. 6d. They might say, “ If 
you will do it I will do it; and a little private mark might 
be introduced which would obviate all difficulty as to 
prices.” Then the answer would often be, “ Oh, Mr. Jones 
will not agree to it.” No ; and if they waited until Mr. 
Jones would agree to it they w T ould never do anything. If a 
person came in and asked the price of making up a prescrip¬ 
tion, and when they were told a fair price said it was very 
dear, that they could get it for so and so, he should reply, 
“ 1 daresay you can, and have the chance of being poisoned 
into the bargain ; but if you go to what you term a respect¬ 
able chemist, such as Mr. So-and-So, I think you will find 
his price very much the same as mine.” That was the way 
to do ; not run down their neighbours and call them dirty 
fellows, or anything of that sort. Call them gentlemen, 
and treat them as gentlemen, and then they would be 
more likely to act as such. If they wanted to raise 
the whole body they must raise the individuals ; a house 
could only be built by piling up brick after brick, and the 
same thing applied to a Society. This course had been 
pursued in some neighbourhoods, and it answered very well, as 
the till bore witness. In conclusion, he remarked that the 
subject had been very well discussed in the letters in the 
Journal, which were always interesting to read, more par¬ 
ticularly, sometimes, the Editor’s comments upon them. 
It was very easy to find fault, and raise objections, and no 
doubt there were objections and difficulties, but it was no 
use getting out of humour •with them ; if you could not 
throttle them, the only way was to “bolt” them. 
Mr. Hustwick (London) said, there was one paragraph 
in the Report which seemed to have escaped the attention of 
the meeting so far, but which appeared to him a matter of 
considerable importance, he meant the paragraph relating to 
the evening meetings, which was dismissed in two and a 
half lines, simply stating that subjects of great interest 
had been discussed. That, no doubt, was the case ; the 
meetings had been well attended, and the subjects had 
been of great interest, but in his opinion these evening 
meetings did not recur often enough, nor was there suffi¬ 
cient time when they were held for the subjects to be 
sufficiently discussed. They found that some of the pro¬ 
vincial Associations held their meetings once a fortnight, 
or at any rate once a month, for eight months out of the 
twelve. For instance, there was the Liverpool Chemists’ 
Association, whose proceedings were reported in the 
J ournal twice a month for about eight months ; and it ap¬ 
peared to him if Liverpool chemists could afford to spend 
so much time on pharmaceutical subjects, in a place like 
London, where everything interesting in the pharmaceutical 
world was to be found, it would be only proper to afford a 
little more time for such meetings than had been done. 
No doubt many gentlemen who attended these meetings 
must have been struck with the rapidity with which the 
time passed; a subject was ho sooner abandoned by the 
original speaker than the discussion commenced, and the 
time appeared to be at an end, and it often occurred that 
the discussion on such and such a matter had to be post¬ 
poned until the next meeting. When that happened to 
take place at the last meeting of the session, there was a 
period of something like five or six months would elapse 
before it came up again. He, therefore, hoped that 
greater facilities would be offered for the purposes of dis¬ 
cussing matters of importance. 
Mr. S. R. Atkins (Salisbury) wished to make one 
remark on the paragraph relating to the Preliminary 
examinations, in consequence of what fell from the Presi¬ 
dent in his opening address. Everything which came 
from the chair deserved the most careful attention of every 
member, but in the paper he had the honour of reading at 
the Brighton Conference, he ventured to express a desire 
that the Preliminary examination would be taken out of 
the hands of the Local Secretaries, although having been 
a Local Secretary himself for many years, and having had 
long experience in conducting these examinations, he had 
no wish to retire from the work which he had cheerfully 
undertaken, and should be prepared most cheerfully to 
carry on. Still he entertained the opinion that it would 
be well if these examinations were taken out of the hands 
of the Local Secretaries, and in the place of them the 
Local Examinations of the three Universities, or of the 
College of Preceptors, or any other duly constituted body, 
were accepted. At any rate he was glad to find this 
matter was engaging the attention of the Council, though 
he could not for one moment endorse the remarks made in 
some correspondence which had appeared, that the Pre¬ 
liminary examinations had been conducted in a slovenly 
or improper manner. So far as his owm observation went, 
and from what he had heard—and he had taken the 
trouble to obtain all the information he could—his im¬ 
pression was that they had been conducted honourably 
and fairly. At the same time he did think some 
change would have to be made, and he was glad to 
find that this subject had been and would be further 
considered. With regard to provincial education, he had 
been much struck with the force and good humour of the 
remarks made by Mr. Humpage, with regard to the 
extreme facility of finding fault, but the extreme diffi¬ 
culty of making useful suggestions. It was no difficult 
matter to do the first, nor was it an easy matter to do the 
second, and he was rather glad that the Council had not 
committed themselves to any definite scheme with regard 
to provincial education. He would not attempt to refute 
the admirable remarks made by the gentleman from 
Aberdeen ; there might have been in the reply to that 
application a little want of wisdom, or perhaps a 
little red-tapeism, but he did feel that the country 
members, if they went into the Council, would have 
to face some very difficult questions, and if Mr. 
Schacht, a most able representative of the provincial 
body, had failed to find the exponent of that difficulty, 
other men might well feel the pressure of it themselves. 
He ventured to think that the true solution of the diffi 
culty was this, that they themselves should become per¬ 
sonally educated. If every pharmacist undertaking the 
responsibility felt it was his duty to train the young men 
under his charge, they would then relieve the Society of 
this which was really a very pressing difficulty. He 
should like to ask Mr. Reid whether he met with much 
response from the young men in Aberdeen, and whether 
they appreciated the privileges which had been so libe¬ 
rally furnished to them. For his own part, he must say that 
after he had, in his own humble way, for some years, endea- 
