The following notice of motion was made: Moved by Mr. John J. Hall, seconded by Mr. L. T. Lawrence,—
“That the mover hereby gives notice of motion that he will be at the next semiannual meeting, bring in a by-law to carry out the provisions of sub-section 3 of section 1 of the amendments in the Pharmacy Act, passed March, 1887, providing for the holding of the elections to this Council by districts, and to amend No. 10 in accordance therewith.”
Mr. Slaven moved, and Mr. McKenzie seconded,—
“That the reports of the Executive and Finance Committees be adopted. Accounts amounting to $56.35 were passed for payment.”
H. W. Watters moved, Wm. Lawrence seconded, the following resolution:—
SHOP-WINDOW CURES.
“If drugs and physic could but save us mortals from the dreary grave,” the Registrar-General’s return of mortality would be reduced to nil. For, in addition to the swarms of doctors, male and female, in London, licensed to kill or cure, a vaunted remedy for almost every disease flesh is heir to may be bought in nearly every street. Addison said of doctors:—“This body of men may be described like the British army in Cæsar’s time. Some of them slay in chariots and some on foot. If the infantry do less execution than the charioteers, it is because they cannot be carried so soon into all the quarters of the town and despatch so much business in so short a time.”
But in our days the vendors of “certain cures” do their business much more easily by staying at home and allowing customers to come to them. They do not even trouble to emulate Cotgrave’s poor doctor of physic, Pulsefeel, who was accustomed to harangue the public that he could “clarifie your blood, surfle your cheeks, perfume your skin, tinct your hair, enliven your eye, and heighten your appetite.” Doubtless vendors of medicines, patent or not patented, find it a profitable business. For one of the characteristics of the true-born Briton is an innate love of physic. Often the most nauseous is esteemed the best, although it may be admitted that the taste for nasty medicine is rather dying out. “To quack of universal cures” has ever been a facile path to public approbation and fortune. Brown wrote:—“Saltimbancoes, quacksalvers, and charlatans deceive the vulgar;” and Burton said, “Many poor country vicars, for want of means, are driven to their shifts to turn mountebanks, quacksalvers and empyricks.” Civilization and progress, instead of leading to a diminution of medicines not recognized in the Pharmacopœia of the Royal College of Physicians, has resulted in an opposite effect. For a number of maladies, or, perhaps, it should be said, names of maladies, have been called into existence unknown to our sturdy forefathers. For instance, we have half-a-dozen new designations for what our great grandmothers would have called a “fit of the spleen.” And for every new name which is devised by the ingenuity of nosologists at least half-a-dozen remedies appear with mushroom rapidity. Even the medical journals teem with advertisements of so-called remedies not admitted into the Pharmacopœia. Bromidia, “the hynotic which does not lock up the secretions;” elixir of cascara, “laxative, palatable, reliable;” pumiline, “for bronchitis, throat and chest affections, fully recognized by over 500 testimonials;” vinolia, “which will relieve the intensest itching from any cause whatever;” liquor cascara suavis, “registered,” are a few among many similar articles advertised in a recent medical journal. Now when orthodox medical journals insert advertisements of the kind they might with grace refrain from, as they sometimes do, calling the lay press to account for the insertion of advertisements of patent medicines. For to the lay mind there really does not appear very much difference between the advertisement of medicated bonbons, “protected by Royal letters patent,” in a medical journal, and advertisements of a like character in a daily newspaper.