6 
PHARMACEUTICAL  NOTES  OF  TRAVEL. 
connected  course  of  argument.  His  assertions  were  well  forti- 
fied by  an  array  of  facts  collected  with  great  industry  and  per- 
severance, and  the  earnestness  of  purpose  which  pervaded  his 
speech  excited  a  corresponding  zeal  in  his  hearers ;  this  was 
evinced  at  intervals  by  the  exclamation,  hear,  hear,  which,  as  I 
heard  it  for  the  first  time  in  a  public  meeting,  excited  the  liveli- 
est enthusiasm. 
The  noble  Lords  who  had  prepared  the  "  Sale  of  Poisons, 
&c.  Bill,"  were  not  spared  in  the  course  of  these  remarks;  they 
were  spoken  of  as  being  wholly  unacquainted  with  the  subject, 
and  as  not  having  endeavored  to  inform  themselves  by  applying 
in  the  right  quarter  for  aid.  If  he,  the  worthy  President,  had 
been  called  upon  to  draw  a  bill  for  the  regulation  of  shoemakers, 
he  should  not  have  done  so  till  he  had  put  himself  in  communi- 
cation with  persons  who  understood  the  trade,  so  as  to  qualify 
him  to  draw  their  bill  properly. 
The  gross  blunders  in  the  bill  were  pointed  out  in  detail ;  its 
inefficiency  to  protect  the  public,  and  its  tendency  to  weaken  the 
profession  of  Pharmacy,  by  throwing  the  trade  in  poisons  into 
the  hands  of  any  who  should  submit  to  the  insufficient  examina- 
tion which  it  proposed  as  the  only  qualification  for  the  respon- 
sible office  now  belonging  almost  exclusively  to  the  druggists 
and  chemists. 
The  selection  of  one  physician,  one  apothecary,  and  one  phar- 
maceutist, as  the  proposed  Examiners  to  determine  the  fitness 
of  the  shopkeeper  to  deal  in  poisons,  was  also  urged  as  an  ob- 
jectionable feature  ;  the  old  grudge  against  the  graduates  of 
Apothecaries'  Hall  was  here  conspicuous,  while  no  objection  was 
urged  against  the  College  of  Physicians  occupying  the  position 
they  already  enjoy  in  England  of  censors  over  our  profession. 
American  pharmaceutists  have  long  since  declared  their  inde- 
pendence of  the  doctors ;  and  indeed  to  the  attempted  inter- 
ference of  a  medical  school  with  the  education  of  pharmaceu- 
tists, the  Philadelphia  College  of  Pharmacy  owes  its  origin.  In 
this  country  the  physician  enjoys  no  further  right  to  interfere 
with  the  pharmaceutist  in  the  exercise  of  his  calling,  than  the 
pharmaceutist  to  determine  upon  the  fitness  of  the  physician. 
Among  the  strongest  arguments  urged  in  these  remarks  against 
the  proposed  new  test  of  fitness  for  selling  poisons,  was  its  in- 
