OF THE FHAIIHACEUTICAL SOCIETY. 
69? 
“ We, the undersigned Members of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, being 
of opinion that the proposed ‘ Amended Pharmacy Act,’ in reference to at least the 
19th clause, will operate unfairly towards present Members, and be inimical to 
the interests of the Public, do hereby request that the President of the said Society 
be asked to convene a Special General Meeting of the Members, to be held at the 
Society’s House in Bloomsbury Square, on some day between the 6th and 11th of 
May next, for the purpose of taking into consideration and the general discussion of 
the said Bill; and that the said Council be requested to take no further steps with 
regard to the said Bill until it has received, either in its present or some amended 
form, the sanction of the Members then assembled.” 
The President said he felt his present position to be somewhat of a novelty. This 
meeting had been called by those who thought the Council had been unmindful of the 
interests of the Society (cries of No, no) ; still, however much opinion might differ, he 
could but regard the agitation which had arisen as an evidence of the interest taken by 
the members generally in the welfare of the Society, the appreciation in which it was 
held, and indirectly as a testimony to the services of the Council in maintaining its posi¬ 
tion. The Council had been requested to call this meeting between the 6th and 11th, 
but it required ten clear days’ notice, and as the notice had to be given in the Journal 
which appeared on the 1st of the month, it would have been impossible to hold it be¬ 
fore the 11th, and it could scarcely be expected that members would come from the 
country to attend two meetings in two succeeding weeksthe meeting had been called 
to discuss the proposed Pharmacy Bill, and he now left it to the requisitionists to proceed 
with the question. 
After a silence of some minutes, 
Mr. Collins inquired whether they were going to have a Quakers’ meeting. 
Mr. Morson said the meeting had been called in obedience to a requisition signed by 
many members of the Society, and now waited to hear the object of the requisitionists. 
Mr. Tugwell (Greenwich) said, that although he was not one of the gentlemen who 
signed the requisition to convene this meeting, yet taking exception to the proposed 
changes by the Council, he would accept Mr. Collins’s challenge, and try to “bell the cat.” 
He would preface his remarks by stating that in taking exception to the views of 
the Council, he did so in no unfriendly or personal sense, but simply to the proposed 
action of the executive of the Society; he would first draw their attention retro¬ 
spectively, and then prospectively. This Society was established in 1841, by a few 
leading members of the trade, and to whom great honour was due, for the educating 
and elevating the whole body of chemists in this country. The great principle of the 
Society was, that after a date long since passed, no one could be a member unless he 
had passed an examination, as required by the bye-laws of the Society; in 1853 the 
doors were again opened to admit those that had then been established in business for 
themselves for, he believed, five years, and from that date up to the present, no one had 
been enabled to join the Society, except by the recognized and legitimate means of ex¬ 
amination,—so that the Society, as now constituted, either meant that a member must 
have been in business for himself for five years prior to 1853, consequently of some 
nineteen years’ experience, or else that he was one who had proved his fitness by passing 
the necessary examination. Every gentleman that had spoken that morning at the general 
meeting had expressed his great satisfaction at the successful and prosperous state of the 
Society, and it is one, he thought, that would point the argument to continue as they were. 
He believed that at the present time the gross total of members was nearly 4000. Of this 
number over 1000 had come up for examination and passed; of course this included 
the Major and Minor Associates. Now on looking to the year now passing, we find that 
the considerable number of 107 had so passed, and that 91 apprentices had enregistered 
themselves on the Society’s books; this was highly satisfactory, and yet the Council 
have now proposed a change to inundate the Society with any one now in business on 
simple registration, even down to assistants and apprentices of two years’ standing. This 
change, he thought he was prepared to prove, was both unnecessary and unlawful; that 
it was unnecessary the great and increasing prosperity of the Society proved, that it was 
drawing gradually but surely all the elite of the trade into membership, and the time 
was rapidly approaching w^hen any one wishing to have a respectable position in the 
trade or with the public, must of necessity be a member of the Pharmaceutical Society; 
and that the change was illegal, an answer, written by Mr.Bremridge to the Bath chemists, 
* 3 A 2 
