[123]. See Goodall, 439. 466.
[124]. This proviso was not necessary, for the Charter could in no way alter the authority given by an Act of Parliament.
Certain Apothecaries, and with some reason, object to this power; for as the Apothecaries Company have erected an extensive establishment for the sale and preparation of drugs and medicines, the private Apothecaries deem it unjust, that their competitors in Trade should be made the judges of the quality of the very articles in which both deal; the public, on the contrary, derive considerable benefit from the circumstance, as the lynx-eyed jealousy of rivals is added to other inducements of the public body to do its duty, and of the private individuals to expose their errors if they deviate from it: under such circumstances however the Society of Apothecaries ought not to have an absolute power of condemnation; an appeal should be allowed to the Censors of the College of Physicians, or some other authority competent to the decision of such cases.
[125]. The words, or party agrieved, might have been properly inserted: as the act stands the patient has no remedy, if the Physician refuse to complain.
[126]. The latitude of the conclusion as to renewal of certificates, in some degree cures and compensates the otherwise extreme severity of this clause, yet the jurisdiction might have been better given than to any Justice of the Peace; how such Magistrate, ignorant of medicine or chemistry, is to judge of the improper mixing or compounding of medicines, we do not pretend to anticipate, still less how he is to determine what shall be taken as a satisfactory reason, excuse, or justification. The most probable offence, to be committed in the country against this clause, will be, by substitution of cheap for expensive drugs; this is a very ordinary mal-practice which ought to be checked, but if the apothecary have not the expensive drug by some excusable accident, and then substitute another of equal efficacy, he would be held excusable in a case of emergency, by any medical authority competent to judge of the merits of the case; this an ordinary Justice of the Peace evidently cannot be.
[127]. Quakers to affirm.
[128]. Query whether the better policy would not have been, to have subjected all persons to examination; a lad may be very stupid and dangerously ignorant even after five years practice in a remote village.
[129]. These five should also have had the power of searching drugs, &c. under certain restriction, as calling to their assistance one member at least of the College of Physicians, or any Licentiate or regular Graduate being a justice of the peace. It is in the country that the worst drugs, &c. are most likely to be found.
[130]. An appeal to the President and Censors of the College of Physicians might have been a salutary check on this power of rejection.
[131]. We do not understand the policy of the exemption: it is surely as necessary to defend the public from unwholesome drugs, &c. whether sold by wholesale or retail, whether bought of a chemist or an apothecary. The censors of the college of physicians may search chemists and druggists wares in London, but as they have no power in the country, this point requires future consideration; for as prescriptions are now very generally prepared by persons who are nominally chemists, though in fact they exercise the ancient business of apothecaries, the public are as deeply interested in the goodness of the drugs kept by the one as by the other.