WOMEN DRUGGISTS.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3362, 12 January 1884, Page 2

WOMEN DRUGGISTS.

Six ladies have distinguished themselves as students in the South London College of Chemistry,” says the “Standard,” “ where they have been studying with a view to pass the examination of the Pharmaceutical Society. They mean to begin life as druggists, and we believe they are the first women who have been trained in a public school for the business of pharmacy. They will assuredly deserve credit for their enterprise, for if they succeed they will have done good service in widening the area of possible employment for women. It has often been matter for surprise that ladies did not select pharmacy as a fair field for the exercise of their talents in winning an honorable livelihood. The trade is a profitable one; in fact, the old saying in the country used to be that the druggist’s shop was the only one in the village where every shilling taken in the till earned lid for the master. The work of preparing and compounding medicines is also neat and delicate —indeed, the Americans have almost elevated pharmacy to the dignity of a fine art in these later days. It is light, and cannot by any pretence be termed “ unwomanly ” so that there ought to be no social prejudice against it. The only possible objection to women as pharmacists would rest in their implied inability to acquire the (scientific knowledge necessary for safe practice. But that objection the six lady students who have stood so well in their classes at the South London School of Chemistry have personally disproved; besides, it is not necessary to license any woman as_ a druggist unless she has the requisite scientific qualifications. In these days when people suffer as much anxiety abont the employment of their girls as of their boys, the discoverer of a new occupation for women is a public benefactor.”