LEEDS CIIEJIISTS’ ASSOCIATION. 
401 
more undesirable than the lot of the man who must for the w'hole of his life—and in our 
trade it amounts to that—live for his business and nothing more. Mere buying and 
selling has little elevating in it, and even dispensing may have so little actual thought 
as to be almost as mechanical an act as the motion of the pestle or pill-machine. What 
%ve want, and what I wish my paper to show, is, the need of something to call out the 
soul of the man, and to make his business interesting to him. To a great extent the 
study of those sciences akin to our business will do this; but there is another opening, 
perhaps more practical, which I think may afford amusement and profit too. I mean 
the manufacture of preparations so often supplied by the wholesale houses, such, for 
instance, as concentrated infusions, sal volatile, etc.; and supposing that in some instances 
a good deal of time has been spent, and the product is not quite up to the mark, you can 
hardly have done this without learning something; even the difficulties you met w'ith 
may have taught as much as success could have done. 
“Suppose you commence business in some obscure country town; for long enough 
after opening you will lind little out-of-the-way things required that you never thought 
of, but which a little chemical and pharmaceutical knowledge would soon furnish for 
you. To be very simple in our illustrations,—and one or two instances from my own ex¬ 
perience will do as "well as a dozen,—you may some fine day have a prescription brought 
with cherry-laurel w'ater ordered. Of course you haven’t it, you never dreamt of that 
being wmnted so soon; or some biniodide of mercury is required by the farrier living 
hard by, or even liquor valangii may be demanded from you. It wdll be very awkward 
to say you cannot dispense such a prescription, but it will establish your credit consider¬ 
ably if you can gain time and furnish the article without having to wait till it can be 
obtained from London. 
“ Again, don’t you think it is better to know what you are doing, what you are selling, 
than I am afraid many of our assistants do? Don’t you think it is a shame that our cus¬ 
tomers, clergymen for instance, who have been dabbling in photography, know often 
really more about chemistry than we do ? I suppose if some inquisitive customer (and 
customers will be inquisitive) was to ask nine out of ten of our assistants how calomel 
was made, or extract of colocynth, or even an every-day article such as carbonate of soda, 
the answers would often be wide of the mark; and I believe if you would only be as 
inquisitive yourselves, and every day learn the history of one of these substances, you 
would soon acquire information of use to yourselves as men and druggists. What is to 
hinder you, after shop, from making, as a commencement, that popular chemical sold by 
chemists of all persuasions, namely, sugar of lead? Litharge, oxide of lead, and acetic 
acid are both cheap enough : boil them together, filter, and set it aside to crystallize. 
You will get such fine bold crystals of acetate of lead as you never saw in your shop- 
drawer ; and when you have fairly studied these, go a step further: dissolve your crystals, 
add some solution af washing soda, and so make carbonate of lead. Collect this pre¬ 
cipitate, wash it, and draw a diagram showing vrhat decomposition has taken place. 
Now, then, make your carbonate into nitrate, and this into iodide, and so on, ever pur¬ 
suing the same base through different combinations, and to make the experiments com¬ 
plete, add to your solutions such reagents as show the presence of lead. This was pretty 
much what the students at the Square did some years ago, and though it may seem to some 
of you a very simple, very elementary sort of chemistry, I believe it is the best; and one 
metal carefully worked with will show the way to all the rest. Or take the ‘London 
Pharmacopoeia’ and make some of the preparations of iron, they are by no means diffi¬ 
cult, and one chemical actually made by yourself will teach you more than much read¬ 
ing without experiment. Gradually you will find that to be a chemist is really some¬ 
thing better than it looks ; it is not so dreary and dull as you thought; a halo of light 
begins to illumine the monotonous array of bottles, and you begin to realize the possi¬ 
bility of your business being what Mr. Deane recommends—work and recreation too. 
Yet I am sure you will not stop here; the whole domain of philosophy is so linked 
together that you are imperceptibly drawn into wider fields of research, each possessed of 
intense interest, each worthy the study of a lifetime. By no means would I have you 
confine your studies to objects immediately connected with your business, for general 
literature must have a place. History is more neglected than it ought to be, for the 
study of the past has many a lesson for the men of the present, and would make us not 
only wiser men but sounder politicians too. And poetry, all unpractical and unbusiness¬ 
like as it may be, has an elevating and refining influence, and while your memory is un- 
