^'"'ocT'^isssr'^™'}        British  Pharmaceutical  Conference.  517 
fundamental  proposition  as  to  pharmaceutical  qualification.  As  foremost 
among  these  he  held  that  whatever  pharmaceutical  work  was  to  be  done  it 
should  be  assigned  to  the  pharmacist.  He  believed  that  this  had  been  done 
to  a  great  extent  in  Scotland,  and  in  Edinburgh  especially,  much  more 
thoroughly  than  it  had  been  in  the  South.  In  consequence  of  the  differ- 
entiation between  medical  practitioners  and  pharmacists  in  that  city,  the 
dispensing  had  for  the  last  forty  years  been  exclusively  in  the  hands  of 
pharmacists  ;  medicine  was  no  longer  dispensed  by  medical  practitioners 
for  their  patients,  as  he  recollected  hearing  in  the  days  of  his  apprentice- 
ship had  been  formerly  the  case.  Even  in  public  dispensaries,  hospitals, 
etc.,  the  same  change  had  been  introduced  and  dispensing  was  no  longer 
done  supposititiously  by  the  resident  surgeon  or  by  medical  students,  and 
in  reality  by  a  porter.  In  the  public  services,  also,  the  principle  of  requir- 
ing qualified  dispensers  was  coming  into  operation,  and  the  work  of  com- 
pounding medicines  was  no  longer  relegated  as  unskilled  labor  to  quite 
unqualified  men.  It  was  only  by  the  extended  application  of  this  princi- 
ple that  it  would  be  possible  to  do  away  with  practices  at  variance  with  the 
true  character  of  pharmacy,  such  as  guessing  quantities  instead  of  weigh- 
ing, and  substituting  one  thing  for  another  as  convenience  required,  prac- 
tices which  were  freely  indulged  in  during  the  old  days  he  referred  to,  and 
were  j^robably  not  everywhere  abandoned  at  the  present  time.  Another 
result,  considered  to  be  naturally  and  inevitably  deducible  from  the  propo- 
sition above  stated,  was  that  the  executive  body  of  the  Society,  which  was 
the  recognized  statutory  exjjonent  of  British  pharmacy,  should  have  a  con- 
siderable share  in  the  compilation  of  the  book  whose  very  name  indicated 
that  it  related  to  the  preparation  of  drugs.  The  share  taken  in  this  work 
should  be  by  right  and  not  by  favor,  and  whenever  the  question  was  opened 
it  could  only  be  settled  in  one  way.  The  subject,  he  said,  was  referred  to, 
not  so  much  for  the  sake  of  argument  as  for  the  sake  of  reference  to  Scot- 
tish procedure  in  past  time,  when  Scotland  was  under  the  authority  of  the 
Edinburgh  Pharmacopoeia,  as  England  and  Ireland  were  under  those  of 
London  and  Dublin.  In  those  days,  Sir  Robert  Christison — himself  a 
master  in  pharmacy,  as  few  medical  men  are  or  require  to  be  now — fully 
recognized  the  right  of  pharmacists  to  take  part  in  the  compilation  of  the 
national  pharmacopoeia  and  he  i^ractically  gave  effect  to  that  recognition 
by  requesting  the  Scottish  members  of  the  Pharmaceutical  Society  to 
appoint  representatives  to  sit  on  the  Pharmacopoeia  Committee  of  the  Med- 
ical Council,  constituted  for  the  purpose  of  assisting  in  the  compilation  of 
the  British  Pharmacopoeia.  That  happened  when  the  Pharmaceutical 
Society  was  only  de  facto  the  exponent  of  pharmacy,  and  now  that  it  was 
de  jure  its  exponent,  there  was  still  greater  reason  for  the  same  course 
being  taken  consistently  with  the  legitimate  claims  of  pharmacy.  A  third 
corollary  to  be  drawn  from  the  proposition  above  stated  had  reference  to 
the  remuneration  of  the  pharmacist  and  though  he  had  some  delicacy  in 
referring  to  this  point  it  certainly  might  be  treated  as  a  strictly  professional 
subject.  If  pharmacy  were  in  any  degree  a  professional  pursuit,  it  should 
to  that  extent  be  remunerated  on  a  professional  basis.  Intrinsic  value  was^ 
indeed,  a  very  important  factor  in  the  details  of  a  pharmacist's  business  ; 
but,  notwithstanding  the  dual  nature  of  his  calling,  intrinsic  value  was  not 
