April 8,1871.] 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
S15 
To my mind, the man who so acts,—and this is no 
imaginary picture,—if he he honest, can at least have 
no well-founded conception either of disease or its ap¬ 
propriate treatment; and the intelligent patient will 
not foil to discover that his medical attendant is a man 
fighting an unseen enemy in the dark, or is solicitous of 
pushing the trade in which he has so immediate an inte¬ 
rest, that medical science must suffer. That will be ap¬ 
parent to any one; for how is it possible to deduce any 
reliable inference from such heterogeneous treatment P 
But, Gentlemen, to give you a home thrust now, the 
complaint is frequently urged against you by my profes- 
.sional brethren, that you encroach on the province of 
the physician in counter-prescribing, and that opportu¬ 
nities are afforded you of doing so in a peculiarly favour- 
.able manner in this city, where a drug shop and a me¬ 
dical man are with the great bulk of the population 
identical. Let me remind you of the rules of Bullyen 
above-quoted, “ That the apothecary meddle only in his 
vocation,” and “That he do remember that his office is 
only to be ye physician’s cook.” You will accede to 
me the right to contend that if I consider it expedient 
that we should leave the pharmaceutical department to 
you, you nrnst meet us in an equally liberal spirit. 
And I will say this for the most respectable druggists 
with whom I have conversed on this subject, that they 
discourage counter-prescribing, and reprehend its per¬ 
formance in others. To me it is quite clear that it is 
only by mutual concessions between dispenser and pre- 
scriber that their relations can be satisfactorily adjusted. 
It is thus that we must endeavour to wipe out the stigma 
against medicine,—that the ancients endeavoured to make 
it a science and failed; the moderns to make it a trade, 
and succeeded. 
But, Gentlemen, while I am opposed on principle to 
the shop system, you will not be surprised if I fail to 
find words to express my indignation at the sale of quack 
medicines by duly qualified medical practitioners. It 
appears to me to be a lamentable manifestation of pro¬ 
fessional degeneracy that so many doctors’ shops in this 
city should display the meretricious tinsel of the impos¬ 
tor; nay, further, that registered practitioners should 
stoop to the issuing of circulars for the purpose of bring¬ 
ing quack medicines under the notice of the public in 
conjunction with their names. There has been, and ever 
will be, a section of the public which will be gulled, and 
that section, I regret to say, not the most illiterate ; but, 
above all others, should we not expect members of the 
medical profession to spurn the puffing of quack medi¬ 
cines P What can be expected of the public, in the face 
of such conduct by medical men P I cannot witness 
without a feeling of profound humiliation such cards as, 
“For a Cough, try Gibson’s Lozenges,” exhibited in 
surgeons’ windows, and, with like feeling, “ Rooke’s 
Pills” and “Solar Elixir” or “Whelpton’s Purifying 
Pills,” pressed into the service of surgeons’ shop-window 
ornamentation. Of a surety Ichabod has been inscribed 
on the JEsculapian temple in modern times. Let me 
refer you to the birthplace of our science in the 
island of Cos, 400 years before the Christian era, for a 
nobler example. Here Hippocrates, in the grey dawn of 
history, dedicated his best energies to the cultivation of 
our science, with that object which, above all others, 
.should be paramount with the honest physician, the 
amelioration of suffering; and to the immortal honour 
of our father be it said that, diligent and skilled in his 
profession, he openly avowed the measures he had taken 
to cure diseases. And even in the fourteenth century a 
righteous detestation of imposition manifested itself in 
such punishment as the following:—It is recorded that 
■one Roger Clerk professed to be learned in the art of 
medicine, and prescribed for a woman suffering from 
fever the hanging of a certain document round the neck, 
containing certain herbs, which he stated were an anti¬ 
dote to the disease under which she suffered. The 
charm did not work. He was summoned before the 
Mayor and Aldermen of the Guildhall of London, at the 
instance of the husband of the patient, to show upon 
what authority he practised the art of medicine. His 
own statement was sufficient to convict him of being a 
rogue and an impostor, and he was forthwith ordered to 
be placed in the pillory, and therein to be punished for 
the offence he had committed against society. His pro¬ 
gress to the pillory is thus described:—“ It was ad¬ 
judged that the same Roger Clerk should be led through 
the middle of the city with trumpets and pipes, he riding 
on a horse without a saddle, and the said parchment and 
a whetstone for his lies being hung about his neck, a 
urinal also being hung before him and another behind.” 
Oh for some such punishment in these days of boasted 
progress ! Only I would extend the treatment to all 
abettors of quackery; and you can fancy, gentlemen, if 
such treatment were enforced in Glasgow, what an im¬ 
posing procession would be thus formed. 
Time compels me, however, to draw these remarks to 
a conclusion; but I may observe that I find it far more 
excusable on the part of the pharmacist to sell quack 
medicines as a branch of his business. This is a ques¬ 
tion with him regulated by the law of supply and de¬ 
mand, and one over which the druggist has no control, 
save at considerable sacrifice, which his refusal to sell 
patent medicines would entail. The ignorance and gul¬ 
libility on the part of the public is an antecedent condi¬ 
tion, and it is his as a matter of business to meet the 
demand so created. The case is very different with the 
medical man, whose duty it ought to be to dispel delusion 
and error. I am of those who believe that no enlightened 
Legislature should afford its protection to any secret 
preparation, and on this point the law of France is 
worthy of imitation. As there is no law to which ex¬ 
ception may not be taken, and no principle which is 
universally applicable, there may occur certain cases in 
which it is impossible to practise medicine without 
dispensing also, as in rural districts and in connection 
with appointments to large public works. I will go a 
little further than this: if a medical man chooses to supply 
medicine to his own patients from his private dwelling, 
I do not think, looking particularly at the matter, as a 
step further advanced in the severance of the duties 
of medical practitioners from that of the pharmacien, 
that the practice is so objectionable. 
Gentlemen, these then constitute some opinions I have 
long entertained on the relations of prescriber and dis¬ 
penser, and you will do me the justice to believe that I 
have come here neither to flatter you nor to traduce my 
professional brethren ; my endeavour has been to follow 
the sound rule of nothing extenuating, nor setting down 
aught in malice. I cordially sympathize with you in 
asking my brethren to move on—to give up merchandise 
—and I am firmly persuaded that medical science and 
the public would be the gainers. Perfection, it is true, 
does not pertain to things terrestrial, but that is no rea¬ 
son why we should not vie one with another in the de¬ 
gree to which our actions should incline towards the 
most honourable conduct, even at the risk of being classed 
as I have been among the “ fussy grievance-mongers.” 
I console myself with the reflection that I am actuated 
by no envy, while it is a well-known truism— 
“ How rarely, friends, an honest man inherits. 
Honours and wealth with all his toils and pains, 
It sounds like language from the land of spirits, 
If any man obtain that which he merits, 
Or any merit that which he obtains.” 
Gentlemen, I am exceedingly obliged to you for the 
courteous attention with which you have listened to these 
my fragmentary observations. 
The President, in proposing a vote of thanks to Dr. 
Black, stated that he could corroborate many of Dr. 
Black’s remarks with reference to both surgeons and 
druggists keeping very inferior drugs; it was only the 
