410 
PHARMACEUTICAL SOCIETY, EDINBURGH. 
time occupied my mind. [For the sake of the younger students of pharmacy now 
present, I shall endeavour, in the first place, to show, in as few words as possible, the re¬ 
lation of their profession and trade to the physician* and the public ; to show them what 
has been done by their predecessors for the advancement of pharmacy, and what is ex¬ 
pected of them if they would improve the position already obtained for them. In the 
second place, I shall ask the attention of the senior members of the Society to a question, 
as it seems to me, of great practical importance relative to the teaching of pharmacy in 
Edinburgh. I shall be as brief as I possibly can in order to allow of time for discussion, 
and I hope the Society will gain far more advantage from the remarks which I trust will 
follow from some of the able Pharmaceutical Chemists, than could be expected from the 
reading of a single paper, however elaborate. 
The physician and the pharmaceutist have a common interest in many things ; and 
whatever tends to the development of the science and art of pharmacy, whilst it relieves 
the physician of many unnecessary cares, renders the practice of his profession at once 
more gratifying to himself and more profitable to the sick. The soldier is none the 
less brave or active because he does not forge his own weapons, but all the more formi¬ 
dable in the ratio of the excellence of his outfit. Nor is the physician less skilful because 
he does not prepare the materials essential to the pursuit of war against disease. The 
physician of the present day is far too heavily loaded with his multifarious ’ologies to 
desire the old encumbrance of pharmacy. Not an encumbrance in the sense of an anti¬ 
quated and useless piece of machinery,—quite the contrary ; for whilst the physician has 
been burying himself deeper and deeper in the mysteries of physiology, pathology, and 
therapeutics, the science and art of pharmacy, under the fostering influence of another 
school, has gradually advanced, and now presents itself in a form so intricate, and alto¬ 
gether so different from the operations and results of the quondam apothecary’s shop, 
that the physician, when he compares the elegant and all-powerful materials now placed 
at his disposal, with the clumsy preparations of former days, is ready to admit that in 
point of scientific investigation as well as practical detail, pharmacy has passed beyond 
his reach. In truth, the physician and the pharmaceutist, although digging in the same 
mine, are working in opposite directions, and the more assiduously they toil, the further 
they get away from one another; but in the end they bring the results of their indepen¬ 
dent labours to a common level at the surface of practical application, and the patient 
gets the double benefit. 
The pharmaceutist is the physician’s best friend. There is nothing antagonistic between 
them. The old suit of Dispensing Physician v. Prescribing Druggist has worn itself out. 
The apothecary, in whom the two functions were united, has fallen into the past, and the 
general practitioner, sprung from the ashes of the former,‘\has virtually conceded the rights 
and privileges, together with the labour and anxiety of pharmacy, to the scientific and 
practical Pharmaceutical Chemist. There are many physicians, it is true, who find it 
necessary or convenient to supply the medicines which they prescribe. But they merely 
obtain from the Pharmaceutical Chemist a sufficiency of drugs to answer the demands of 
a great number of prescriptions, instead of sending each prescription to the pharmaceu¬ 
tical laboratory. It is in the matter of dispensing , not of the preparation of drugs, that 
the relations of the physician and the pharmaceutist differ. In country districts, the 
physician must keep a stock of medicines; in towns the practice is not essential and is 
falling into disuse. But in all cases the chemicals , and in most cases the galenicals also, 
are in the first instance supplied by the Pharmaceutical Chemist, and often down to the 
very simplest formulae. 
It is now nearly a quarter of a century since British pharmacy assumed a respectable 
and responsive position. In the year 1841, a few of the leading chemists and druggists, ' 
in London and some of the provincial towns, realizing at once the general backwardness 
and helplessness of the disunited representatives of pharmacy, seized upon the floating 
reins of office, and by a firm but temperate hand gathered into one the disjointed 
members, and organized the now prosperous body known as the Pharmaceutical 
Society. 
Before that period, it is true, pharmacy had been diligently studied, both as a science 
and art, by many talented and thoroughly competent individuals ; and perhaps the real 
* I use the word physician throughout, simply for the sake of avoiding the longer terms 
“ Medical Man,” “Medical Practitioner,” “General Practitioner,” etc. 
