294 PHARMACEUTICAL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
That the separation between the two professions should be 
as complete and wide as possible, is 4 no doubt demanded by 
the true interest of both. 
The chemist and druggist has hitherto been free from any 
special legislative enactment; but an attempt has recently 
been made to pass an act, (known as "Mr. Hawes' bill,") 
through parliament, to bring them under legislative control 
and prohibit them, under penalties, from prescribing at their 
counters. Although the more respectable among them avoid, 
as much as possible, giving medical advice in any way, they 
contend that severe legislative restrictions would be attended 
with injustice, or at best be ineffectual. That it is in fact a 
part of their duties, to be conversant with the doses and pro- 
perties of medicine, and to communicate that knowledge 
when called upon; that it would be unjust to punish the drug- 
gist for doing that which every vender of merchandise is al- 
lowed to do, explain the uses and describe the properties of 
the article in which he deals. That if giving advice in sim- 
ple cases, is to be made a felony, few benevolent individuals, 
and no old women in the kingdom, would be safe from fine 
and imprisonment ; and that equity requires, if the chemist 
and druggist is, by law, to be excluded from the practice of 
the' apothecary, the apothecary in like manner should be for- 
bidden to interfere in the province of the druggist, by the 
sale of medicine. 
The efforts of the chemists and druggists to present the 
passage of this bill, by bringing them in contact with each 
other, for the purpose of united defence, has taught them the 
necessity of association, for the protection of their interests as 
a community, and has generated a degree of esprit du corps, 
in which feeling 3 they appear to have been hitherto remarka- 
bly deficient. The advantage found to result from the partial 
union thus produced, together with a general conviction of the 
necessity of some authorized supervision, caused the germ of 
the " Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain," of 
which the papers cited at the head of this article, contain the 
initiatory reports, &c, together with the earlier numbers of a 
