100    MEMOIRS  OF  PHILADELPHIA  COLLEGE  OF  PHARMACY. 
Two  sets  of  resolutions  of  like  import  were  offered  at  this 
apothecaries  meeting ;  those  proposed  bj  Henry  Troth  were 
adopted.  Thej  respectfully  set  forth  that  the  method  proposed 
by  the  Trustees  of  the  University  is  not  suited  to  correcting  the 
alleged  abuses  in  the  drug  and  apothecary  business,  and  direct 
the  appointment  of  a  Committee  to  report  on  the  subject  to  a 
future  meeting. 
This  Committee  consisted  of  nine  persons,  as  follows  : 
Samuel  Jackson,  Daniel  B.  Smith,  Robert  Milnor,  Peter 
Williamson,  Stephen  North,  Henry  Troth,  Samuel  Biddle, 
Charles  Allen,  Frederick  Brown. 
In  those  days  the  Professor  of  Materia  Medica  in  the  Uni- 
versity was  Dr.  John  Redman  Coxe,  a  man  of  very  consider- 
able learning  and  vigorous  intellect,  though  singularly  deficient 
in  qualifications  for  a  teacher.  He  was  doubtless  the  leading 
spirit  in  this  new  movement  of  the  Trustees,  which,  however 
distasteful  to  the  druggists  and  apothecaries,  had  a  certain  ground 
of  reasonableness,  and,  as  the  event  proved,  had  the  happy  effect 
of  calling  the  attention  of  those  most  directly  interested  to  the 
needs  and  requirements  of  the  trade. 
There  are  few  problems  in  history  so  difficult  as  to  trace  the 
real  relations  of  men  who  have  been  actors  in  its  important 
changes,  to  those  changes  themselves.  Events  which  might 
seem  to  be  the  results  of  the  exertions  of  one  man  or  one  party 
often  have  arisen  from  manifold  causes,  some  of  which  are  quite 
beyond  human  ken. 
Dr.  Coxe  and  his  colleagues  appear  to  have  perceived  what 
hud  been,  long  before,  appreciated  and  acted  upon  in  Europe — 
that  the  trade  of  the  druggist  and  apothecary  involving  peculiar 
responsibilities,  and  being  inseparably  connected  with  chemical 
processes  and  with  many  delicate  manipulations  connected  with 
vending  and  preparing  potent  agents  for  the  treatment  of  dis- 
ease, is  one  demanding  scientific  and  practical  education  of  a 
peculiar  kind. 
Previous  to  1821,  in  this  new  country  with  its  sparse  popula- 
tion and  vast  territorial  extent — its  few  small  but  growing  cities 
scattered  along  the  sea-board — the  occasion  had  scarcely  arisen 
to  put  in  practice  the  obvious  educational  means  fitted  to  these 
