April 8,1871.] 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
813 
teries of disease, and basing its treatment on rational 
principles—an object at present the most prominent 
and most praiseworthy of modem medicine,—what might 
be called the manipulatory portion of oui* art became dis¬ 
carded by the heads of the profession, and was confined 
in England and Ireland to the licentiates of the Apothe¬ 
caries’ Company in the respective countries, such licen¬ 
tiates possessing, according to law, certain privileges; 
while in Scotland the same conditions developed the drug- 
trade, in addition to the shops of medical practitioners. 
Corresponding to the licence of the Apothecaries’ Com¬ 
pany in England and Ireland, there was no analogous 
qualification in Scotland, save, perhaps, that the licence 
of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and of the 
Glasgow Faculty conferred the right to deal in pharmacy. 
In the latter country a physician, i . e. a graduate of medi¬ 
cine of a university considered it quite honourable and 
legitimate to keep open shop ; while in the former the 
apothecary was almost exclusively what might be called, 
with a violation of gender, in these primitive times 
when ladies attended to their household duties, the 
handmaid to the physician, or pure surgeon. To indi¬ 
cate how defined the duties of apothecary were even in 
the sixteenth century the following quaint rules for an 
apothecary’s life and conduct merit quotation :— 
“ 1. Must fyrst serve God, forsee the end, be clenly, 
pity the poore. 
“2. Must not be suborned for money to hurt man- 
kynde. 
“3. His place of dwelling and shop to be clenly to 
please the sences withal. 
“ 4. His garden must be at hand with plenty of herbes, 
seedes, and rootes. 
“ 5. To sow, set, plant, gather, preserve and keep 
them in due tyme. 
“ 6. To read Dioscorides, to know ye nature of plants 
and herbes. 
“ 7. To invent medicines, to choose by colour, taste 
odour, figure, etc. 
“ 8. To have his mortars, stilles, poltes, filters, glasses, 
boxes, clene and sweette. 
“ 9. To have charcoles at hand to make decoctions, 
syrups, etc. 
“ 10. To keep his cleane ware close and cast away the 
baggage. 
“11. To have two places in his shop, one most cleane 
for the physic, and a baser place for the chirurgerie stuff. 
“ 12. That he neither increase nor diminish the phy¬ 
sician’s bill, i. e. (prescription) and keep it for his own 
discharge. 
“ 13. That he neither buy nor sell rotten drugges. 
“ 14. That he peruse often his wares, that they corrupt 
not. 
“ 15. That he put not in quid pro quo (t. e. use one in¬ 
gredient in the place of another when dispensing a phy¬ 
sician’s prescription) without advysement. 
“16. That he may open wel a vein for to helpe pleu¬ 
risy. 
“ 17. That he meddle only in his vocation. 
“ 18. That he delight to reede Nicolaus Myrepsus, 
Valerius Cordus. etc. etc. 
“ 19. That he do remember his office is only to be ye 
physician’s cooko. 
“ 20. That he use true measure and weight. 
“21. To remember his end and the judgment of God; 
and thus do I commend him to God, if he .be not co¬ 
vetous or crafty, setting his own lucre before other men’s 
help, succour and comfort.” 
The apothecaries, to whom these rules were given were 
merely grocers, who elected to perform the meaner duties 
of the physician or surgeon. In the fourth year of James 
I. a charter was obtained that “willed, ordained and 
granted, that all and singular the freemen of the Mystery 
of Grocers and Apothecaries of the City of London, 
should and might be one body, corporate and politic, in 
deed, fact, and name of the Warden and Commonality of 
the Mystery of Grocers of the City of London.” And 
in the thirteenth year of the same King- and reign these 
so-called mysteries were disunited, this being the origin 
of the London Apothecaries’ Company. For a consider¬ 
able time after their formation as a company, the apothe¬ 
caries were kept closely under the surveillance of the 
College of Physicians; but as time wore on, they began 
to assert their independence, and took to proscribing 
after the fashion of the physicians. This, of course, 
applies to England, but I refer to the circumstances in 
order to indicate that originally the Society of Apothe¬ 
caries was intended to be subservient to the physician 
and surgeons. In Scotland the conditions to which I 
have already adverted, developed a large commercial 
enterprise, independent of the Scotch physicians and 
surgeons, but possessing no chartered privileges. Public 
benefit at length demanded—the trade having become 
such an extensive one—a guarantee of knowledge of the 
business, and ability to dispense physicians’ and surgeons’ 
prescriptions, and through the exertions of the Pharma¬ 
ceutical Society, an enlightened measure was carried 
through Parliament in 1868, whereby it is, inter alia , 
provided “That it shall be unlawful for any one to sell, 
or keep open shop, or to assume the title of ‘ chemist and 
druggist ’ or the like, unless he shall be properly regis¬ 
tered under the Act,” and in order to obtain proper 
registration under the Act the passing of a very stringent 
examination is a necessity. Now, Gentlemen, I look 
upon the Pharmacy Bill as having entirely superseded 
the charter of the Apothecaries’ Company in England, 
and as having virtually cut the connection between the 
practice of medicine and surgery, and pharmacy as a 
trade in Scotland; and as the result of some attention 
to the subject, I am firmly persuaded that it is expedient 
that this separation should exist. I shall not take up 
your time by animadverting upon the hue-and-cry raised 
against the Bill by the medical practitioners. You may 
remember the widespread consternation as to the shutting 
of their shops. I thought the agitation discreditable to 
the profession, and I, for one, extremely regret that the 
Act was not enforced in its primary interpretation. I 
therefore think the Pharmacy Bill an enlightened mea¬ 
sure, for if there is any one belief that I hold stronger 
than another on medical matters, it is this principle, that 
no medical practitioner should have a pecuniary interest 
in the drugging of his patients. This being the case, I 
maintain that indiscriminate drugging is too much the 
custom both in England and Scotland (I cannot speak 
for Ireland) ; that it does much to subvert a rational 
faith in medicine, and that, to a great extent, the shop 
system is chargeable with the offence. In the face of 
the Pharmacy Bill, and for sundry other reasons which 
I shall refer to in the sequel, I hold that it is highly 
discreditable to the city of Glasgow, that out of a total 
of 190 practising practitioners, not less than 120 should 
put themselves in open competition with qualified drug¬ 
gists. In the discussion raised upon my paper, read 
before the Medico-Cliirurgical Society, the President 
of the Faculty contended that I exaggerated and mis¬ 
represented the condition of the profession in Glas¬ 
gow, and by implication admitting the shop system to be 
inimical to the interests and dignity of the profession, 
held that there w-as not now one medical man’s shop for 
eight that previously existed. I now tell you that this 
is a great mistake, for there never were more doctors’ 
shops in Glasgow than at present. 
But, Gentlemen, if I denounce this system of practice 
I must justify my denunciations of it. For the shop 
system, so far as several medical men in this city are 
concerned, I plead the apology of necessity, but this is 
quite beside the question of principle, and in what re¬ 
spect I plead this necessity I have in my paper on " Me¬ 
dical Reform” endeavoured to point out, and your time 
will not permit me to enter on this part of the subject on 
this occasion. 
Well, I charge the shop-system with slipshod treat- 
