Note 126 — 3. OF THE SOCIETY OF APOTHECARIES.[120]

The latitude of the conclusion as to renewal of certificates, in some degree cures and compensates the otherwise extreme severity of this clause, yet the jurisdiction might have been better given than to any Justice of the Peace; how such Magistrate, ignorant of medicine or chemistry, is to judge of the improper mixing or compounding of medicines, we do not pretend to anticipate, still less how he is to determine what shall be taken as a satisfactory reason, excuse, or justification. The most probable offence, to be committed in the country against this clause, will be, by substitution of cheap for expensive drugs; this is a very ordinary mal-practice which ought to be checked, but if the apothecary have not the expensive drug by some excusable accident, and then substitute another of equal efficacy, he would be held excusable in a case of emergency, by any medical authority competent to judge of the merits of the case; this an ordinary Justice of the Peace evidently cannot be.