152 
BRITISH PHARMACEUTICAL CONFERENCE. 
Secondly, I deny that that man is equal to his position who has no wider 
range of thought than the subjects necessarily suggested to him by the de¬ 
mands of a retail trade. If either of these theories be true our Society has 
been one long farce, and has taught us a heap of useless things. But a phar¬ 
maceutist must be a chemist; he is infinitely advantaged if a good botanist, 
and he is in no way injured if he have a fair acquaintance with Materia Medica. 
If, moreover, he has some practical skill in quantitative and qualitative analysis 
his chances are still brighter ; while in many districts it is to his extreme advan¬ 
tage to be well up in assaying. 
No one man shines in all these things, let each to the utmost of his ability 
follow out the bent of his own mind. To talk of the restricted nature of the 
druggist’s business seems to argue some ignorance of the subject. “The true 
reason,” says Mr. Deane, “ why so many shops exist by which the owners fail 
to get a living arises from their profound ignorance, not only of the common 
principles of trade, but of the merest elements of their business. Young men 
with little experience, either from books or practice, who scarcely know a dan¬ 
delion when they see it, who cannot tell marshmallow from henbane, and whose 
chemical knowledge will not enable them to explain the difiference between an 
acid and an alkali, open shops in the most unlikely situations, which could 
scarcely under any circumstances command success. The swarms of such hope¬ 
less pharmaceutists are the children of low education and a neglected apprentice¬ 
ship.” 
The smallness of returns is another point, the very difficulty with which we 
wish to cope. There is at least one means of help. Let the pharmaceutist 
study first, though not exclusively, his own immediate neighbourhood,—its 
wants, manufacturing, medical, sanitary, social, or strictly local. If by his skill 
he can meet any of these in part or altogether, he is a truer and more ethical 
chemist than the man who that morning has made an eight-ounce mixture, and 
then gazes into vacancy for the chance of making another. 
May I remind you of those two admirable sets of Cantor Lectures, delivered 
by Grace Calvert before the Society of Arts. The first was entitled “ Chemis¬ 
try applied to the Arts the second, “ On some of the most important Chemical 
Discoveries Avithin the last Two Years.” This second series comprised arts and 
manufactures, agricultural chemistry, physiological chemistry, rocks and mine¬ 
rals, metals and alloys. I cannot conceive two more useful courses, or more 
directly adapted to the immediate purposes of the druggist. I also can testify 
from sorrowful experience to the painfully overcrowded state of an audience 
which thoroughly appreciated the value of the lectures. I am told that giant 
manufactures swamp individual effort; to some extent, and in the case of cer¬ 
tain things, they do ; but I have yet to be convinced that from such a wealth 
of objects the pharmaceutist might not find something on which to bestow his 
special care, and might not in so doing increase his reputation and augment his 
till to a much larger extent than he does at present. 
It is therefore with extreme satisfaction that I notice the somewhat new in¬ 
troduction of Liebig’s dietetic preparations,—his various foods and concentrated 
meats, and other preparations of the same class. It is the direct business of the 
pharmaceutist to produce them, and it does not militate against the argument 
to say that this is but one avenue of income, and could not support universal 
pharmacy: no more would one particular stone give stability to a tower. 
One thing is certain, that in our day he who assiduously combines chemistry 
with physiology seems most likely to have a chance of ultimate commercial 
success. I have faith in high-class pharmacy. With regard to villages and 
provincial towns I am not prepared to give an opinion; but with regard to 
densely populated districts and large commercial centres, notwithstanding many 
plausible arguments to the contrary, my creed is still unchanged. Yet there is 
