THE 
AMERICAN  JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY. 
SEPTEMBER,  1853. 
ON  THE  PROGRESS  OF  PHARMACY  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN. 
Our  last  number  made  the  readers  of  the  Journal  acquainted 
with  the  Act  of  Parliament,  familiarly  known  in  England  by  the 
name  of  the  "  Pharmacy  Act,"  by  which  certain  powers  were 
granted  to  the  Pharmaceutical  Society  of  Great  Britain  to  regulate 
the  qualification  of  its  me  mbers,  and  to  assume  a  name  or  title  not 
hitherto  generally  applied,  which  should  imply  a  special  qualifi- 
cation in  Pharmacy.  We  now  propose  to  give  a  short  account  of 
the  circumstances  out  of  which  this  measure  has  grown,  and  the 
agencies  by  which  it  was  accomplished. 
The  Parliament  of  Great  Britain  is  the  supreme  power  of  the 
land,  the  power  to  which  all  classes  appeal  to  remedy  great  evils, 
and  whose  mandates  are  universally  respected.  To  obtain  an  Act 
of  Parliament,  where  the  powers  asked  for  have  a  bearing  on 
several  classes  of  the  community,  requires  great  perseverance  and 
influence  on  the  part  of  its  promoters,  as  the  Bill  is  subjected  to 
the  severest  scrutiny  both  by  the  legislative  bodies,  and  the  parties 
who  will  be  influenced  or  imagine  they  will  be  affected  injuriously 
by  it. 
In  the  year  1843,  soon  after  the  origin  of  the  Pharmaceutical 
Society,  the  Council  made  application  and  obtained  a  Charter, 
which  granted  the  Society  certain  corporate  privileges,  and  pub- 
lically  acknowledged  the  chemists  and  druggists  as  a  distinct  class 
of  the  community,  yet  gave  them  no  restrictive  power  in  regulating 
the  qualification  of  the  practitioners  of  pharmacy.  From  that  time 
to  the  granting  of  the  Act  just  obtained,  the  Society  have  anxiously 
sought  to  obtain  additional  powers.  In  1846  a  bill  was  drafted 
and  discussed  by  the  Council,  but  little  progress  was  made  until 
after  the  election  of  Jacob  Bell  to  Parliament.  The  first  aim  of  the 
Council  was  to  obtain  an  Act  clothing  the  Society  with  authority 
sufficiently  ample  to  compel  all  future  "chemists  and  druggists" 
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