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

eyed with concern the interest shown by the chemists and druggists in that
direction.
During the course of negotiating this legislation the Pharmaceutical
Society suffered some damaging misfortunes, which suggest that the early
leaders lacked political skill in their dealings with government and with
their medical colleagues. They took exception to a clause, included in the
Bill that became the Apothecaries Act (1815) that described the
pharmacists‘ business in general terms. In an attempt to ensure that they
were not disadvantaged by the clause, they re-wrote it, describing their
business in great detail, and submitted it to the Society of Apothecaries.
But their version of the clause failed to specify that they had been
prescribing for the public. The Bill had made no mention of this facet of
their work and, in the absence of an amendment, would have permitted it to
continue. In their eagerness to provide a job description so detailed that it
would secure every aspect, they foolishly omitted prescribing and thereby
denied themselves the possibility of emulating the apothecaries and
becoming general practitioners.
Until the introduction of the Pharmacy Act (1868), pharmacies had
each been operated by a single proprietor. Eager to offer security for
pharmacists‘ widows, the Society allowed the widows or the deceased‘s
executors to continue to run the business, provided they employed a
pharmacist to supervise the shop. Limited companies correctly decided that
the law would permit them also to operate pharmacy businesses on this
basis. The pharmacists‘ lack of foresight meant that the tradition of single
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