October 28,1871.] 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
349 
f rjjfetndal toitmtiras. 
GLASGOW CHEMISTS AND DRUGGISTS’ 
ASSOCIATION. 
The opening Meeting of the session was held in 
Anderson’s University on Wednesday evening, 18th inst., 
Mr. Thomas Davison, President, in the chair. There 
was a good attendance of members. Mr. H. C. Baildon, 
President, and Mr. John Mackay, Hon. Secretary of the 
North British Branch of the Pharmaceutical Society, were 
also present, from Edinburgh. 
The Chairman briefly introduced Edward C. C. 
•Stanford, Esq., Ph.C., P.C.S. (British Sea-Weed Com¬ 
pany), who delivered the inaugural address as fol¬ 
lows :— 
Gentlemen,—As this is not the first time that I have 
been requested by your committee to open your session, 
I feel that, however inadequately and imperfectly I may 
perform the pleasing duty they have imposed upon me, 
I must, nevertheless, now look upon it as a duty, and 
one that can be no longer postponed. 
I would have much preferred that some one of you 
should have occupied this position on the present occa¬ 
sion ; one more conversant than myself with the nu¬ 
merous details of your most detailed of all professions; 
one who could have spoken with authority on those 
numerous vexed questions which are now becoming so 
interesting to all of you. You will not, however, expect 
me to enlarge upon these; I could add nothing to your 
information on such topics; and, moreover, I would 
.select higher ground for our occupation this evening. 
It is always a relief to turn from those petty annoyances, 
which are inseparable from every man’s daily life, to a 
larger field, where there is light and recreation. We j 
are all allowed to soar aloft into the calm serenity of 
philosophic truth, where the little vapours of human, 
disputes never rise and cannot penetrate. It is interest-1 
Ing even to observe from these thoughtful eminences the 
money-grubbers of the earth, and note their infinitesi- j 
mal size and true value. Without, however, touching 
on vexed questions, I feel bound to say a few words 
.about the Pharmaceutical Society. I have had unusual 
•opportunities of intimately knowing for years the men j 
•whose names are only now becoming familiar to most of 
you. Through good repute and evil repute, mostly the ! 
latter, they have fought an uphill fight for many years 
against the ignorance and prejudice of this country. 
You cannot be sufficiently grateful to these disinterested 
men that they have at last won the position; nor can 
you ever sufficiently revere the memory of their intrepid 
leader who fell nobly fighting for the good cause. I say 
disinterested, because few of the founders of the Phar¬ 
maceutical Society could ever expect to reap the benefit 
of their labours in their own lifetime; they worked 
for the public good, and they worked for posterity. 
And let us not forget that the ignorance they fought 
against was largely developed in their own ranks. If 
you compare the state of British pharmacy when the 
Society was first founded with that of Continental 
pharmacy, and the status of the British pharmaceu¬ 
tist with that of the French pharmacien, you will see 
Row much we had to be ashamed of and how much 
we had to learn. The pharmacien, a man of university 
•education and of high scientific attainments; the phar¬ 
maceutist, a poor apprentice, who studied the “ rudi¬ 
ments of chemistry” in the shape of pounding various 
drugs, and never cared to know from whence they were 
derived. The emblem of the one, the microscope and 
the balance; the emblem of the other, the pestle and 
mortar. The founders of this Society saw that it was 
no use to clamour for an equal position for their brethren 
until they were educated for that position. To have 
suddenly converted the status of the chemists and drug¬ 
gists of Great Britain to that of high-class pharmaceutists 
without education, would have been quite as sensible as 
to have made them all post-captains, and sent them to 
sea without teaching them navigation; though the 
former mistake might have been better for the British 
navy. 
The Council acted wisely, therefore, in at once setting 
; to work as an educational body. They established a 
i school of pharmacy, chemistry, botany and materia me- 
dica. Fownes and Pereira, the most eminent men of 
; the time, were the first lecturers, and their successors 
have fully maintained their reputation. There is no 
school in London where the teaching of these special 
sciences is so sound and so good. No greater proof of 
its success can be desired than the comparatively large 
j number of young men who have passed the curriculum, 
| whose names are already well known in pharmacy. So 
j far from being the last in the race, there is every proba¬ 
bility that the present race of pharmaceutists will not 
j be excelled, and may even be unequalled in any other 
j nation. Now, however, that the Pharmaceutical Society 
: is an examining body, and the only one under Govern¬ 
ment by which all future pharmaceutists will have to 
be examined, their position has certainly become ano¬ 
malous, and they must sooner or later sever this con¬ 
nection. They will have to renounce the right of 
educating and then examining; the examination must 
be restricted to their rules, but the education must be 
open and free. London, as the great heart of the United 
Kingdom, will always be the centre ; and the eminent 
professors who have made the reputation of Bloomsbury 
Square will, I trust, long guide the helm of pharmaceu¬ 
tic education. But every large city must become an¬ 
other centre for the education of its own district. You 
are particularly well situated here, as almost any kind 
of scientific education can be cheaply obtained in this 
city.. It is time to be up and stirring. I cannot con¬ 
gratulate you very heartily on your remarkable progress 
in pharmaceutic elevation so far; but you are earnest 
men ; and if festina lente is your motto, it is a good one, 
if you do not allow the second word too much to dis¬ 
qualify the first. There is no doubt your action has 
been a good deal paralysed by the very large number of 
surgeons who keep open shops here; in fact, I never 
saw any city so peculiarly situated in this respect. The 
public have a right to expect that all assistants in these 
shops should pass the examinations of the Pharmaceu¬ 
tical Society. The evil will not, in my opinion, be a 
lasting one, for I am convinced the public welfare de¬ 
mands a rigid separation of medicine, surgery and phar¬ 
macy, as in France, and to that it will come sooner or 
later. 
Any man who wishes to become eminent in either of 
these branches of science (and all students ought to en¬ 
deavour to be so) will find that he has the work of a long- 
lifetime before him; and to suppose that pharmacy can 
be learnt, in its true sense, in the short course presented 
to medical students is perfectly absurd. The fact really 
is, that pharmacy, materia medica, and chemistry and 
botany in their relations to it, were almost unstudied 
sciences in this country, and there were no examinations, 
worthy the name in either before those of the Pharma¬ 
ceutical Society were established. 
Another effect of stringent examination will be to con¬ 
siderably decrease the number, and largely increase the 
intelligence of those entering the profession. Both these 
effects are improvements; but the latter involves an¬ 
other difficulty. Where are the masters who can teach 
the apprentice of the present day the theory of his pro¬ 
fession ? Not until the old school has passed away can 
we expect to find masters generally sufficiently qualified 
to teach the apprentice all he requires to know to enable 
him to pass the examinations of the Society. 
I am very glad to see, from the last report of your 
committee, that they are already up and doing ; that 
they know the wants of their brethren, and are deter¬ 
mined to supply them, wisely and well. It must also 
