BATH CHEmSTS’ ASSOCIATION. 
TO THE EDITOE OP THE PHAEMACEETICAL JOEENAL. 
Sir,—At a meetiEg of the Bath Chemists’ Association, held on the 2nd inst., the 
following address was delivered by the President, Mr. Merrikin. The sentiments therein 
contained were approved by the meeting, and Mr. Merrikin’s views, expressed in the 
latter part of it, were considered of snfficient importance to be, with some modifications, 
embodied in an address to the Council of the Pharmaceutical Society. This has been 
done ; and I am requested to forward to you a copy of Mr. Merrikin’s address for inser¬ 
tion in the Pharmaceutical Journal. 
I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
John C. Pooley. 
Bath, November 17th, 1866. 
THE PEESIDBNT’s ADDEESS. 
After a few preliminary remarks, the President went on to say:— 
On commencing this our third Session, I cannot but congratulate you on the success 
which has attended the formation of our Society. Taking into consideration the small¬ 
ness of our numbers, our progress has been as great as could reasonably be expected, and 
thanks to the aid so kindly and generously afforded by Messrs. Scbacht and Stoddart, 
the papers of the last Session were not only productions of marked interest, but full of 
suggestions capable of being utilized in the practice of our profession. 
Those gentlemen who were present at the reading of Mr. Stoddart’s paper must still 
bear in their minds, with pleasurable recollection, the large amount of practical infor¬ 
mation contained in it, delivered, as it was, in such an easy and instructive manner, 
accompanied by such numerous and striking experiments, and enhanced by the author’s 
genial and affable tone, when explaining the theories which those experiments illus¬ 
trated ; and, I doubt not, those gentlemen will join with me in expressing my regret that 
such a valuable paper should have been read to so small an audience. 
Mr. Schacht’s paper was one also of great practical interest to us all, and more espe¬ 
cially, as a modification of Mr. Schacht’s more elaborately constructed apparatus may 
soon be used on every chemist’s counter. 
The continued success and increasing influence of the Pharmaceutical Conference, as 
proved by the late meeting'at Nottingham, justifies us in the hope that it will become 
a permanent institution. 
The addition of an Exhibition of Objects relating to the Practice of Pharmacy was 
a most excellent idea, and appears to have been well carried out. I do not know whether 
the gentlemen who attended the Conference as our delegates noticed any novelties 
amongst those objects which were likely to be of general use ; if so, perhaps they will 
kindly bring them under our notice. 
The Conference has unquestionably been the means of doing much good; it evi¬ 
dently has a mission to perform, and a part of that mission is to arouse chemists gene¬ 
rally from the state of lethargy and inaction into which we had, as a body, fallen. 
Until of late, we had given ourselves up too much to mere trade interest, forgetting the 
higher and more scientific branches of our calling, and, if I may use the expression, we 
have been accustomed to look upon borax merely as a commercial article, and not as a 
biborate of soda, and to accept our drugs and chemicals from the wholesale houses 
without a thought as to their origin or mode of production. 
The great feature of the Nottingham meeting was undoubtedly Mr. Ince’s paper on 
“Pharmaceutical Ethics;” and an admirable paper it is,—remarkable, at once, for the 
terse eloquence of its language, the purity of its tone, and the force of its conclusions. 
It is a matter of regret that as much cannot be said of some portions of the discussion 
which followed. I allude, in the first place, to the question of dusting by apprentices. 
The idea that they are degraded by taking a duster in their hands, may suit very well 
the ethics of a southern luxuriousness, but it scarcely accords with my own notions of 
shop-rule,—notions engendered and fostered, I admit, by the more stern and rugged 
training of a northern school. The suggestion, again, that only large establishments 
should be tolerated, is, I think, worthy of reprobation, more especially as it was coupled 
