Chapter XXXVIII: Front Matter (38)

Whereas it is expedient for the safety of the public that persons keeping open shop for the retailing, dispensing, or compounding of poisons, and persons known as chemists and druggists should possess a competent practical knowledge of their business, and to that end, that from and after the day herein named all persons not already engaged in such business should, before commencing such business, be duly examined as to their practical knowledge, and that a register should be kept as herein provided, and also that the Act passed in the 15th and 16th years of the reign of her present Majesty, intituled ‘An Act for Regulating the Qualification of Pharmaceutical Chemists,’ hereinafter described as the Pharmacy Act, should be amended: Be it enacted, by the Queen’s most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in this present Parliament assembled, and by authority of the same, as follows:——

From and after the 31st day of December, 1868, it shall be unlawful for any person to sell or keep open shop for retailing, dispensing, or compounding poisons, or to assume or use the title ‘Chemist and Druggist,’ or chemist or druggist, or pharmacist, or dispensing chemist, or druggist, in any part of Great Britain, unless such person shall be a pharmaceutical chemist, or a chemist and druggist, within the meaning of this Act, and be registered under this Act, and conform to such regulations as to the keeping, dispensing, and selling of such poisons as may from time to time be prescribed by the Pharmaceutical Society with the consent of the Privy Council (Clause 1).

Chemists and druggists within the meaning of this Act shall consist of all persons who at any time before the passing of this Act have carried on in Great Britain the business of a chemist and druggist in the keeping of open shop for the compounding of the prescriptions of duly qualified medical practitioners, also of all assistants and associates, who before the passing of the Act shall have been duly registered under or according to the provisions of the Pharmacy Act, and also of all such persons as may be duly registered under this Act (Clause 3).

All such persons as shall from time to time have been appointed to conduct examinations under the Pharmacy Act shall be, and are hereby declared to be, examiners for the purposes of this Act, and are hereby empowered and required to examine all such persons as shall tender themselves for examination under the provisions of this Act,[93] and every person who shall have been examined by such examiners, and shall have obtained from them a certificate of competent skill, and knowledge, and qualification, shall be entitled to be registered as a chemist and druggist under this Act, and the examination aforesaid shall be such as is provided under the Pharmacy Act for the purposes of a qualification to be registered as assistant under that Act, or as the same may be varied from time to time by any bye-law to be made in accordance with the Pharmacy Act as amended by this Act, provided that no person shall conduct any examination for the purposes of this Act until his appointment has been approved by the Privy Council (Clause 6).

[Footnote 93: See above.]

No name shall be entered in the register, except of persons authorised by this Act to be registered, nor unless the registrar be satisfied by the proper evidence that the person claiming is entitled to be registered; and any appeal from the decision of the registrar may be decided by the council of the Pharmaceutical Society; and any entry which shall be proved to the satisfaction of such council to have been fraudulently or incorrectly made may be erased from or amended in the register, by order in writing of such council (Clause 12).

“The registrar shall, in the month of January in every year, cause to be printed, published, and sold, a correct register of the names of all pharmaceutical chemists, and a correct register of all persons registered as chemists and druggists, and in such registers, respectively the names shall be in alphabetical order, according to the surnames, with the respective residences, in the form set forth in schedule (B) to this Act, or to the like effect, of all persons appearing on the register of pharmaceutical chemists, and on the register of chemists and druggists, on the 31st day of December last preceding, and such printed registers shall be called ‘The Registers of Pharmaceutical Chemists and Chemists and Druggists,’ and a printed copy of such registers for the time being, purporting to be so printed and published as aforesaid, or any certificate under the hand of the said registrar, and countersigned by the president or two members of the council of the Pharmaceutical Society, shall be evidence in all courts and before all justices of the peace and others, that the persons therein specified are registered according to the provisions of the Pharmacy Act or of this Act, as the case may be, and the absence of the name of any person from such printed register shall be evidence, until the contrary shall be made to appear, that such person is not registered according to the provisions of the Pharmacy Act or of this Act (Clause 13).

From and after the 31st day of December, 1868, any person who shall sell or keep an open shop for the retailing, dispensing, or compounding poisons, or who shall take, use, or exhibit the name or title of chemist and druggist, or chemist or druggist, not being a duly registered pharmaceutical chemist, or chemist and druggist, or who shall take, use, or exhibit the name or title pharmaceutical chemist, pharmaceutist, or pharmacist, not being a pharmaceutical chemist, or shall fail to conform with any regulation as to the keeping or selling of poisons, made in pursuance of this Act, or who shall compound any medicines of the British Pharmacopœia, except according to the formularies of the said Pharmacopœia, shall for every such offence be liable to pay a penalty or sum of £5, and the same may be sued for, recovered, and dealt with in the manner provided by the Pharmacy Act for the recovery of penalties under that Act; but nothing in this Act contained shall prevent any person from being liable to any other penalty, damages, or punishment to which he would have been subject if this Act had not been passed (Clause 15).

_Clauses of the Pharmacy Act relating to the sale of Poisons._

It shall be unlawful to sell any poison either by wholesale or retail, unless the box, bottle, vessel, wrapper, or cover in which such poison is contained be distinctly labelled with the name of the article and the word poison, and with the name and address of the seller of the poison; and it shall be unlawful to sell any poison of those which are in the first part of schedule (A) to this Act, or may hereafter be added thereto under section II of this Act, to any person unknown to the seller, unless introduced by some person known to the seller; and on every sale of any such article the seller shall, before delivery, make or cause to be made an entry in a book to be kept for that purpose, stating, in the form set forth in schedule (F) to this Act, the date of the sale, the name and address of the purchaser, the name and quantity of the article sold, and the purpose for which it is stated by the purchaser to be required, to which entry the signature of the purchaser and of the person, if any, who introduced him, shall be affixed; and any person selling poison otherwise than is herein provided, shall, upon a summary conviction before two justices of the peace in England or the sheriff in Scotland, be liable to a penalty not exceeding £5 for the first offence, and to a penalty not exceeding £10 for the second or any subsequent offence; and for the purposes of this section the person on whose behalf any sale is made by any apprentice or servant shall be deemed to be the seller, but the provisions of this section, which are solely applicable to poisons in the first part of the schedule (A) to this Act, or which require that the label shall contain the name and address of the seller, shall not apply to articles to be exported from Great Britain by wholesale dealers, nor to sales by wholesale to retail dealers in the ordinary course of wholesale dealing, nor shall any of the provisions of this section apply to any medicine supplied by a legally qualified apothecary to his patient, nor apply to any article when forming part of the ingredients of any medicine dispensed by a person registered under this Act provided such medicine be labelled in the manner aforesaid with the name and address of the seller, and the ingredients thereof be entered, with the name of the person to whom it is sold or delivered, in a book to be kept by the seller for that purpose, and nothing in this Act contained shall repeal or affect any of the provisions of an Act of the Session holden in the fourteenth and fifteenth years in the reign of her present Majesty, intituled ‘An Act to regulate the Sale of Arsenic’ (Clause 17).

SCHEDULE (A).