522 
THE DINNEE FOE THE BENEFIT OF THE BENEVOLENT 
FUND OF THE PHAEMACEUTICAL SOCIETY. 
MR. GEORGE WEBB SANDFORD, PRESIDENT, IN THE CHAIR. 
Tliis festival took place at Willis’s Eooms, on Wednesday, the 20th of 
February, a day which will be long remembered by the Founders of the 
Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain ; a day worthy of “ red letters ” in 
their calendar, and perhaps a day to which many a future widow or orphan 
may recur with gratitude and thankfulness. The musical arrangements were 
under the direction of Mr. Young, assisted by Messrs. Wilbye Cooper, Far- 
quharson, and King. Mr. Harker, jun., acted as toastmaster. 
This was the largest gathering of pharmaceutists which ever occurred,^ 
and they brought with them friends ready to promote one great object of the 
Institution—the relief of distress,—friends to whom the Society owes a deep 
obligation for the hearty and liberal manner in which they came forward to 
augment a Benevolent Fund, special in its character. Among the visitors 
we noticed Mr. Vanderbyl, M.P., the Eev. Walter Mitchell, Drs. Quain, 
Saunders, Langdon Down, Silver, Tilbury Fox, Beared, Simms, Buchanan, 
Musgrave,and Frankland; Messrs. Ernest Hart, Flux,Ellis,Quincey,Forster, 
Lansdown, A. and L. Newbery, Barclay, Nicholson, W. P. Brook, Alfred 
Penny, and many other gentlemen. We saw also Messrs. Frederick Barron 
(one of the most active promoters of the dinner), Becket, J. Herring, M‘Cul- 
loch. Watts, Horner, Hill, Evans, Hopkin, Williams, Westwood, Savory, 
Messer, Daniel Bell, Hanbury, and many representatives of the wholesale 
houses, w ith a very large sprinkling of Chemists and Druggists unconnected 
with the Pharmaceutical Society. In all, 264 sat dowm to dinner. 
It was required to raise the amount of invested capital from seven to ten 
thousand pounds, and the dinner has accomplished half that work, a sum ex¬ 
ceeding fifteen hundred pounds having been collected. For the present, at 
least, the Council need not scruple, if there be need (and the President said 
there was need), to add to the number of annuitants. 
Those who worked in the beginning with Jacob Bell and the more forward 
men of that day must have been reminded of their early exertions, and glad¬ 
dened by the evidences of success which surrounded them ; they must have 
felt almost that the spirit of Jacob Bell had descended on the meeting, once 
more bringing all chemists and druggists into union for one common object. 
Not only members of the Pharmaceutical Society, wlio have a vested interest 
in this fund somewhat of the nature of a contingent assurance company, but 
the trade generally seemed moved by a desire to come together in harmony, 
acknowledging that the Society had faithfully carried out the objects of its 
founders, had elevated their body to the rank of a profession, lessening, or 
indeed obliterating altogether, the feeling of jealousy and distrust which 
formerly existed between “ doctors and druggists,” and obtaining in its stead 
such hearty goodwill and just appreciation as were so generously expressed 
by Dr. Quain and Mr. Ernest Hart. 
We augur much good from this meeting, and we cannot help associating it 
with others which have recently occurred. That at Bloomsbury Square, on 
the previous day, proved the desire of chemists already established, and fami¬ 
liarly spoken of for the last few years as “outsiders,” to come into the So¬ 
ciety. The more brilliant assembly of the 30th ultimo, at Willis’s Eooms, 
where the happy union of Chemists and their Assistants at a Ball entirely in¬ 
augurated by the latter, made us hopeful as to the future; to the assistants 
and apprentices of this day we look for the life-blood of the Society in 
