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PHARMACEUTICAL SOCIETY OP GREAT BRITAIN. 
ART. LVII. — PHARMACEUTICAL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRI- 
TAIN. 
/. Report of the Committee appointed at a public meeting of Chemists and 
Druggists, held at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Strand, on the 15/ h of 
February last. 
II. Address of the Council of the Pharmaceutical Society to the Chemists 
and Druggists of Great Britain. 
III. Constitution and Laws of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. 
IV. Pharmaceutical Transactions, Edited by Jacob Bell, Nos. 1 to 4, for 
July, August, September, and October, 1841. London, J. Churchill, $rc. 
There appears, to a stranger at least, much confusion in 
the ranks of the medical and pharmaceutical communities in 
Great Britain. The English " Apothecary," so called, is 
properly a dispensing Physician. With those amongst them 
who deal in drugs at all, medical practice is the principal ob- 
ject, selling and dispensing medicines a secondary one. 
The medical practice of the " apothecary," which, perhaps, 
was in its origin induced by the exclusive laws, which hedged 
around the entrance to the professions of the physician and 
surgeon, was long considered irregular, and their charges were 
not for advice and attendance given, but for medicines furnish- 
ed to their patients. 
This amalgamation of the duties of physician and druggist, 
seems to have had an injurious effect upon their standing in 
the community; the divided nature of their duties, disquali- 
fied them from rising to eminence, either as pharmacians, or 
practitioners, while their interference in medical practice, 
naturally awakened the jealousy, and provoked the opposition 
of the physicians. The opposition thus occasioned, tended to 
produce a closer union among the apothecaries themselves ; 
and the accusation, constantly directed against them of selling 
bad medicines, gave an excellent pretext for the formation of 
