-Address. 
95 
apothecary will take care how he makes himself accessary, 
however unintentionally, to the criminal purposes of the 
wicked or wretched, or to the disastrous mistakes of the ig- 
norant. In many countries, the vending of these dangerous 
medicines is regulated by law ; but in the absence of all le- 
gal provision with us to regulate the pharmaceutist in this 
respect, it will be proper for him to adopt the rule not to dis- 
pense any poisonous medicine, unless on the prescription of 
a regular physician, or on the written order of some respon- 
sible head of a family. 
In recommending to the apothecary, as a legitimate object, 
to endeavour to improve the mode of preparing various 
medicines, I do not mean that he should attempt to fit them 
as cures for this or that disease ; for to effect this would be 
impossible. But an article of the materia medica may not 
be prepared on strict chemical or pharmaceutical principles. 
Careful experiment and observation may show that the active 
part of a medicine is injured or destroyed by the ordinary 
mode of preparation ; that inert matters are uselessly retain- 
ed, instead of being excluded ; that a wrong or injudicious 
solvent is employed, or, finally, that those expedients which 
may be properly resorted to, to cover the taste or to lessen 
the bulk of the medicine, have been neglected. When errors 
of preparation such as these, not to mention others, occur, it 
is the legitimate province of the pharmaceutist to correct 
them, and to present the active parts of a medicine in the 
most favourable state for administration by the physician. 
But he is not to go further, and experiment with it in different 
diseases, and then announce to the public at large, that it is 
a remedy for whooping-cough, for ague, or for any other 
disease. To do so would be doubly wrong, — intrinsically 
wrong, because it is impossible that any medicine, in itself, 
can be a cure for any disease; and professionally wrong, be- 
cause it does not belong to the pharmaceutist to investigate 
the remedial virtues of different medicines. An individual 
thus attempting to exercise the professions both of apothecary 
and physician, gives proof not of the extent of his attain- 
ments, but rather of his presumption. 
