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

apothecary. 9 This view was also held by Dr E. Jepson who stated that the
assistant‘s qualification gave its holder no authority to act on his or her own
responsibility, but only under the supervision of an apothecary. He
specifically made the point that doctors should be careful when leaving
assistants to dispense medicines containing active ingredients such as
strychnine. In addition, those responsible for recruiting dispensers in
institutions should consider whether they should engage a pharmacist
rather than an apothecaries‘ assistant. 10 The position was also expressed
well by the Departmental Committee formed in 1913 to consider the
workings of the National Insurance Act. It said that the Apothecaries Act
(1815) did not give assistants any rights or privileges, but simply stopped
anyone acting as an assistant to an apothecary unless they were qualified
according to the Act. 11
Although, at the time of the Poisons and Pharmacy Act (1908) some
apothecaries‘ assistants suspected the potential for later difficulties, most
did not and they were horrified when the National Insurance Act (1911)
threatened to take away their livelihood. The apothecaries were their
patrons and many assistants wrote to the Society of Apothecaries in despair,
asking what was being done to secure their future, as the following letters
show. Mr S. Wright, who was about to take the assistant‘s examination,
was ―… anxious for the future.‖ He wrote to the Clerk of the Society asking
whether the certificate would have any value after the National Insurance
9 „Legal Intelligence‟, Pharmaceutical Journal, series 4, 75, 21, (16 Dec. 1905) 846-848.
10 „Dispensers, Qualified and Unqualified‟, British Medical Journal, (24 Jun. 1905) 1407.
11 Report of the Departmental Committee appointed to consider the conditions imposed by Section
15(5)(ii) of the National Insurance Act 1911 on the Supply of Medicines to Insured Persons, vol. II, p.
149.
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