PHARMACEUTICAL  NOTES  OF  TRAVEL. 
7 
terference  with  the  legitimate  objects  and  duties  of  the  Phar- 
maceutical Society.  If  the  bill  passed,  the  effect  might  be  that 
parties  would  go  to  the  Government  Board  and  pass  the  exami- 
nation for  half-a-guinea,  and  thus  would  the  necessary  schools  of 
education  be  deserted.  The  President,  therefore,  urged  resistance 
to  the  establishment  of  a  Government  Board  of  Examiners  in 
whatever  shape  it  might  be  offered  ;  if  the  object  was  that  the 
public  should  not  be  poisoned,  they  should  confine  the  sale  to  the 
members  of  the  Pharmaceutical  Society  ;  if  the  government  had 
attended  to  the  recommendations  of  this  Society  fifteen  or 
twenty  years  ago,  there  would  be,  at  the  present  time,  no  ig- 
norant men  in  the  business. 
Now,  all  might  be  called  Upon  to  submit  to  an  examination, 
and  if  they  failed  in  satisfying  an  irresponsible  Board,  which 
might  be  influenced  by  the  representations  of  rival  apothecaries, 
they  would  be  ruined.  This  would  be  exceedingly  unjust,  and 
at  variance  with  precedent,  for  in  the  Apothecaries'  Act  of 
1815  every  person  then  in  business  was  exempted  from  its  ope- 
ration. In  other  professions  matters  were  managed  differently  ; 
in  abolishing  a  court  of  law,  for  instance,  every  person  inter- 
ested had  received  a  pension  for  life.  Now,  if  all  in  business  as 
chemists  were  offered  an  adequate  pension  for  life,  he  thought 
many  would  be  glad  to  retire  at  once  (hear  and  laughter).  With 
regard  to  the  registration  of  the  sales  of  poisons,  the  Council 
had  been  willing  to  compromise,  but  if  done  as  proposed  in  the 
bill,  it  would  take  upwards  of  ten  minutes  to  vend  any  poisonous 
article. 
At  the  close  of  the  President's  speech,  a  spirited  discussion 
grew  up  on  all  the  particulars  of  the  bill,  which  showed  on  the 
part  of  some  of  the  speakers  no  little  skill  in  debate.  The  list 
of  proscribed  poisons  was  shown  to  be  most  incomplete,  while  it 
contained  some  articles  rarely  or  never  used  as  poisons.  Several 
speakers  from  the  country  towns  gave  it  as  their  experience  dur- 
ing a  long  series  of  years,  that  with  the  ordinary  precautions 
dictated  by  prudence  in  the  management  of  business,  accidental 
poisoning  had  rarely  or  never  occurred.  The  retailing  of  oxalic 
acid  by  the  "pen'orth"  seems  to  be  very  common  with  these, 
and  it  was  stated,  with  much  reason,  that  the  proposed  restric- 
ions  on  the  sale  of  this  and  other  poisons,  would  lead  to  the 
