PHAKMACEUTICAL ETHICS. 
149 
honesty to know only set passages of that dreary compilation then in use in 
I Bloomsbury Square. Night after night for months did he hammer at his task, 
i until he ended by being a fair reader of average Latin prose. 
He joined the Westminster Book Society ; the members met at each other’s 
houses, and proposed works of history, travel, biography, and general literature. 
I From that date no Oxford student was a more constant reader; and when 
in due time more liberal circumstances allowed him a wider range, he added 
! another ethical practice of sacred origin, he was given to hospitality, at some 
1 periods of the year keejjing literally open house. 
I Fights there were—moral, not physical—for those were the days of O’Connell 
I and Sir Robert Peel, the Romish Question and Scriptural Geology; and just 
j to show you the superiority of those times, of all the young men, whether 
doctors or embryo clergy, rising chemists, incipient missionaries or students at 
the courts, there was not one who was not capable of settling any of the great 
questions of the day without a moment’s hesitation. 
Before the shade passes, one last word. 
The Chester apprentice just before his death stated his profound satisfaction 
that he had been able to read Humboldt’s ‘ Cosmos,’ understanding its allusions. 
Peace to his memory ! he is gone where the Tower of Babel shall no more dis¬ 
tract him. 
MultsB terricolis linguse, ccBlestibus una,” 
Section VI. 
ETHICS OF TRADE EXTENSION. 
There is another subject of paramount importance and of extreme difficulty, 
to which I ask your attention. I cannot do better than introduce it by reading 
a letter I received from Mr. T. W. Gissing, of Wakefield :— 
“ Dear Sir,—In the above subject I think one point should be particularly 
considered, and that is the increasingly mixed character of the business con¬ 
ducted by most of the best educated chemists. My belief is that this feature 
will become every year more marked, and I believe one of the main reasons of 
the development is the comparatively miserable incomes that even the best 
businesses yield when confined entirely to drugs. 
“ The most intelligent men (especially if they have a little capital) are the 
first 'to rebel against the restricted form of business: they feel disgusted to see 
men around them in other businesses with no education (compared with their 
own) amassing wealth easily, whilst they may go on through a long life and 
barely live. 
“IVTether any law compelling surgeons to give up dispensing would alter it, 
will be much discussed. My opinion is that that would affect only a few, and 
that the great mass of pharmaceutists and non-pharmaceutists would still 
be left in the same condition. As it is, the thing crops out in every form. 
One man makes soda water ; another indulges in oils and colours ; another does 
a private wine trade ; another pushes some proprietary article ; others become 
manure makers ; and so on. But it all tends to one thing, and that is to prove 
the discontent of the most intelligent members of our business with their remu¬ 
neration,” 
With regard to one paragraph I can only answer it from a London point of 
view. It would make not one straw of difference to us whether such a law as 
that alluded to were passed or not. When a London surgeon so far forgets 
himself as to keep an open retail, his business is rarely of such a character as to 
excite apprehension in the mind of the most timid pharmaceutist, and he is natu¬ 
rally looked down upon by the trade on the one hand, and the profession on the 
other. But this leaves the great question untouched, the acknowledged existence 
