LIVERPOOL chemists’ ASSOCIATION. 
709 
The minutes of the previous meeting were read and passed. 
The following donations to the Library were announced:—The ‘New York Drug¬ 
gists’ Circular ’ for April, from Mr. Mercer ; Inaugural Address, Queen’s College ; Pro¬ 
ceedings of the Liverpool Polytechnic Society. A vote of thanks was passed to the 
donors. 
Mr. W. Hartley, 50, Lord Street, was unanimously elected a member of the Asso¬ 
ciation. 
In the absence of miscellaneous communications, tbe President called upon Mr. H. S. 
Evans, F.C.S., to read the paper for the evening, on “ Vegetable Organization, in Special 
Kelation to the Natural History of Drugs.” 
Mr. Evans said : The action of medicinal bodies upon the animal organism is more ex¬ 
clusively the study of the medical practitioner, although to the pharmaceutist it per¬ 
tains to a degree sufficiently to enable him to detect errors or act in emergencies. But 
the natural history of all the substances which form the Materia Medica is pre-eminently 
the pharmaceutists’ and chemists and druggists’ subject. The natural and chemical his¬ 
tory, the mutual affinities and reactions, and the art of combining, and also of testing 
and determining the purity, genuineness, and general perfection of the properties of 
medicines pertain entirely to the chemist and druggist or Pharmaceutical Chemist. To 
us the physician looks for a supply of medicaments possessing qualities that shall pro¬ 
duce certain defined effects, and through the physician the public relies upon us for the 
conscientious and faithful discharge of the physician’s directions and orders. But how 
can we do this if we be ignorant of tbe natural qualities and properties of the medicines 
we assume the responsibility of dispensing? 
It is a matter of no mean importance to the public in general, and the physician in 
particular, that the dispenser of medicines and compounder of physicians’ prescriptions 
should be a notoriously qualified person, and that his knowledge and acquirements in 
the science and art of pharmacy should be well attested to the public by the certificate 
of duly appointed officers ; indeed, it is due to the public health and safety that these 
responsible duties (on the due execution of which depends the life or death, the health 
or destruction, of the community at large) should only be allowed to be performed by 
persons who shall have submitted their acquirements to the judgment of fully quali¬ 
fied examiners. It is to be hoped, therefore, that the legislative measure now being 
considered may mature, so that after the commencement of 1868 the public will, for the 
future, enjoy the great boon of a compulsory qualification alike in the dispenser and 
the compounder, as in the prescriber of medicines. Mr. Evans then illustrated his sub¬ 
ject by numerous instances of evil results arising out of ignorance on the part of the 
dealer in medicines of their characteristics, and how the like ignorance had retarded the 
progress of medical science, and had obscured the recorded experience of our forefathers, 
and that there was sad evidence of its operation in the present day. From his own ob¬ 
servation, he had noted a sad apathy and inattention to those subjects without which a 
well-grounded knowledge of Materia Medica could not be acquired, indicating a defi¬ 
ciency too often on the part of those to whom the professional education of the pharma¬ 
ceutical student has been entrusted. Tracing back the tide of medical science to the 
tiny rills of prehistoric knowledge, and to the primitive gathering-ground, whence have 
flooded out those mighty streams of medical knowledge, swelling to dimensions so 
gigantic that none can say to what they yet may tend, or set bounds to its resistless pro¬ 
gress,—let us leave behind us the wreck-strewn beach, and career along its restless 
tide of knowledge to that higher intelligence which shall be lost in an ocean of universal 
happiness alike illimitable and imperishable. Independently of the great importance 
which the study of vegetable organization bears to other branches of pharmaceutical 
studies, seeing that 70 per cent, of the Materia Medica are of vegetable origin, there 
is in this subject an interest beyond all others. Mr. Evans then, by the aid of sections 
and preparations of vegetable structure and microphotograpbs, projected by the aid of the 
oxyhydrogen microscope, explained the course of the plant life, and the mutual relations 
and functions of the various organisms,—the effects of climate, soil, and culture upon 
the growth and development of specific properties being fully discussed. Like phy¬ 
siognomy, the general aspects of vegetables give us the first rude idea of a generaliza¬ 
tion and classification, and we thereby open an inlet to their individual characters. 
Strong presumptive evidence is thus afforded of the existence, patent or latent, of pro¬ 
perties of a more or less potent character. The study of the relation between form and 
