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THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
[August 12, 1871. 
MEETING OF CHEMISTS AT LEEDS. 
A "Meeting of subscribers to the fund for opposing the 
late Pharmacy Bill was held in the Library of the Leeds 
Chemists’ Association on Monday, August 7, 1871; Mr. 
W. Smeeton, President of the demists’ Association, in 
the chair ; it was unanimously resolved,— 
“ That the hearty thanks of this meeting are due and 
.are hereby tendered to W. M‘Cullagh Torrens, Esq., 
M.P., for his opposition to the late Pharmacy Bill.” 
“ That the best thanks of this meeting are due and 
are hereby tendered to Edward Baines, Esq., M.P., Mr. 
Alderman Carter, M.P., W. St.-J. Wheelhouse, M.P., 
C. B. Denison, Esq., M.P., and J. Feilden, Esq., M.P., 
for the courtesy and attention with which they received 
the representations made to them of the objectionable 
character of the late Pharmacy Bill, and for the grounds 
which most of these gentlemen have given their consti¬ 
tuents for believing that they would have opposed its 
.second reading.” 
“ That this meeting approves of the decision of the 
Chemists’ Defence Association, and of the Metropolitan 
Chemists’ Defence Association, to maintain their or¬ 
ganization, and recognizes their past valuable services 
in protecting the best interests of the trade as giving 
them additional claims for continued support.” 
“ That the best thanks of the meeting be given to Mr. 
Smeeton for presiding.” 
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. 
The ceremony of “capping” graduates in the Univer¬ 
sity of Edinburgh took place in the Music Hall, on 
Tuesday, August 1st. 
Professor Macpherson, Dean of the Faculty of Law, 
presented the following gentlemen for the honorary de¬ 
gree of LL.D., and made a short statement of the prin¬ 
cipal claims of each to the honour. 
Thomas Andrews, F.R.S., H.F.R.S.E., Vice-President 
of Queen’s College, Belfast, and Professor of Chemistry 
in the Queen’s University, for his investigation into the 
laws of the development of heat in chemical combination, 
researches on ozone and demonstration of the continuity 
of the liquid and gaseous states of matter. 
Pierre Joseph Van Beneden, Professor of Comparative 
Anatomy in the University of Louvain, author cf me¬ 
moirs of great value in various departments of compara¬ 
tive anatomy. 
W* B. Carpenter, F.R.S., M.D. Edin., Registrar of 
the University of London, for his various writings on 
physiology, investigation into the condition of the deep 
sea and services in the promotion of education. 
Professor Challis, for a quarter of a century Director 
of the Cambridge Observatory and Plumian Professor of 
Astronomy and Experimental Physics. 
Auguste Colding and James Prescott Joule, for their 
services to science in connection with the subject of the 
conservation of energy. 
James Joseph Sylvester, late Professor of Mathematics 
at. "W oolwich, for his contributions to mathematical 
science. 
George Gabriel Stocks, Secretary of the Roval Society, 
Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in Cambridge Uni¬ 
versity, for his contributions to mathematics and phy¬ 
siology. J 
^ Allen. Thomson, M.D., Professor of Anatomy in the 
University of Glasgow, for his writings on embryology. 
. W. Spottiswoode, F.R.S., Treasurer of the Royal So¬ 
ciety and of the British Association, for his distinguished 
services in the cause of science. 
G. E. Paget, M.D. Cantab., D.C.L. Oxon., President 
of the General Medical Council. 
William Huggins, F.R.S., D.C.L. Oxon., eminent 
among those who have brought into prominence the ap¬ 
plication of spectroscopy to the stars, developing, with 
the aid of modem researches, the modes of observation 
initiated by Fraunhofer. 
Jules Janssen, another eminent spcctroscopist, who has 
devoted himself specially to solar spectroscopy. 
John Peter Gassiot, F.R.S., distinguished for his re¬ 
searches in electricity, and for the interest he has mani¬ 
fested in the Observatory at Ivew by his recent munifi¬ 
cent endowment of its magnetic observatory. 
Various other degrees were conferred upon gentlemen 
entitled to receive them. 
Professor Bennett then delivered the concluding ad¬ 
dress. After alluding to various changes that had oc¬ 
curred since he last addressed the graduates in 1849, he 
described the education which the University provided 
for the medical student, and adverted to the important 
position to be held by him in the future, and the valuable 
service he might render to the State by assisting to dif¬ 
fuse sound knowledge on vital points concerning the 
health. Reference was made to the ignorance still dis¬ 
played in these matters, in spite of the lessons taught by 
the scurvy and smallpox ; and the speaker attributed 
the immunity from smallpox enjoyed in Scotland during 
the last few months to the vast advantage resulting from 
Government interference, and compelling the people 
against their will to take the necessary precautions. 
These and other examples show the utter uselessness of 
supposing that sanitary laws will ever be followed by 
the public as long as they remain ignorant of the rudi¬ 
ments of the knowledge necessary for the preservation 
of their own lives. Under the present system of educa¬ 
tion classical and literary studies, and the reading of 
imaginative works—including poetry and most histories 
and biographies,—may foster taste and lead to the culti¬ 
vation of art and of all that supports the elegancies of 
life, but it keeps up a metaphorical mode of speech and 
inexactitude of language, which has descended to us from 
the earliest times. The ancients believed that life was 
an immaterial principle that might be added to or taken 
away from the body, as exemplified in the fable of Pro¬ 
metheus, who animated the marble statue with fire 
stolen from heaven. They thought that the mental 
faculties and feelings were seated in the internal organs 
of the body. Hence the terms, “vital spirit,” “spark 
of life,” and so on, while the heart, the liver, the spleen, 
the reins, and other viscera, are referred to literally or 
metaphorically, as so many seats of mental faculties or 
moral feelings. We talk of the emotions of the heart 
as representing a state of mind distinguished from the 
reasoning powers. This loose and vague kind of lan¬ 
guage renders those that use it upholders of all kinds of 
error. Indeed these are the class of persons everywhere 
most intolerant, because they are least capable of com¬ 
prehending scientific laws and scientific evidence. 
Clergymen and most religious teachers are totally in¬ 
sensible to the errors and discrepancies of language they 
use in the pulpit, so that, when the scientific man takes 
his place in church, he is surprised at the ignorance of 
established truths constantly shown. While acknow¬ 
ledging the great services rendered by the clergy, he 
thought what incalculably greater good would they 
effect if, in addition to their actual knowledge, they 
were acquainted with what is known as to the laws of 
life, the causes of death, the proper means for averting 
disease, and the influence which the body and the mind 
exert upon each other. It were easy to point out how 
all professions and all ranks of the community might in 
like manner be benefited by a similar acquaintance with 
physiological truth. Women in all ranks of society 
should have physiology taught to them. It should be 
an essential subject in their primary, secondary, and 
higher schools. So strong were his convictions on this 
subject, that he esteemed it a special duty to lecture on 
physiology to women, and he found them most attentive 
and interested in the subject, possessing indeed a pecu¬ 
liar aptitude for the study, and an instinctive feeling, 
whether as servants or mistresses, wives or mothers, that 
that science contained for them, more than any other, 
the elements of real and useful knowledge. 
