A Respectable Occupation: - University of Hertfordshire Research ...

or manufacturing purposes.‖ 162 This contest between free trade and public
safety was settled in the 1908 Act by a compromise between individual
liberty and public good. Traders, other than chemists and druggists, were
permitted to sell poisonous preparations containing arsenic or tobacco or the
alkaloids of tobacco. However the preparations were to be used exclusively
in agriculture or horticulture and the trader had to be licensed to do so by
his local authority.
The First Nail in the Apothecaries‘ Assistants‘ Coffin
While these two great debates involving the Pharmaceutical Society, the
company chemists and the agricultural agents were raging, the 1903
Pharmacy Bill was being placed before Parliament. It contained an
apparently insignificant provision that was to assume great importance for
the apothecaries‘ assistants. Once Lloyd George‘s 1911 National Insurance
Act took away their dispensing work and gave it to the chemists and
druggists, the clause became the focus of a lengthy struggle between the
Society of Apothecaries and the Pharmaceutical Society.
The provision was included in clause 10 of the 1903 Bill and
permitted the Pharmaceutical Society‘s council, on the payment of a fee, to
recognise certificates indicating an acceptable standard of skill and
knowledge. These certificates were to be issued by legally authorised
pharmaceutical bodies in any colony or possession, providing that the
candidate had undergone an appropriate course of training and passed an
162 Report of the Departmental Committee appointed by the Lord President of the Council to consider
Schedule A to the Pharmacy Act, 1868 (25 Nov. 1902), p. xii.
263