THE ALUMNI JOURNAL SI 



most important that every beginner in the work of life should hear; namely, the 

 message of individual responsibility toward the profession one has chosen and 

 toward life itself. 



During the years when we are at school and college, while we hear much of 

 these things, we are all apt to treat them lightly and carelessly, and it is only 

 when some specific occurrence takes place in our own . experience to bring the 

 lesson of responsibility home that we realize just what it means. As I pointed 

 out earlier in the evening, these men are now members of an old and responsible 

 calling which serves the public in many ways. It is very interesting to see how 

 these callings or professions with which we are familiar have developed from 

 their different beginnings and have come to take on the form which they now 

 have. There was a time when the physician himself was the pharmacist so far as 

 there were pharmacists, nurses so far as there were nurses, specialists and gen- 

 eral practitioner all in one, but now with the advance of science and art the devel- 

 opment of the needs of man and the pressure of society upon us, this one calling 

 has broken itself up into many separate parts, and today, instead of finding dif- 

 ferent manifold activities gathered into one pair of hands, we find them divided 

 among a dozen. 



The pharmacist today takes his place in the service of society as one of 

 the aids and helpers of a great profession of medicine which in all its forms 

 stands closer to human life in moments both of joy and sorrow than any other 

 single career can possibly do. Let us observe the series and we will have a series 

 of responsibility which this fact necessarily carries with it. Lack of knowledge, 

 lack of power or lack of judgment at a critical moment, a mistake made through 

 haste or carelessness may imperil or save human life. Not only lives, but many 

 may turn on the knowledge and self-control and quick-wittedness of the well- 

 trained pharmacist or pharmaceutical chemist ; and remember that while that 

 life may be unknown to you or to me, to someone in the world it the most 

 precious of all lives. That responsibility and that possibility for service rests 

 upon human beings imperfect like you and me, trained as well as science and art 

 can train them, but still depending in the last resort upon that hidden power 

 which tries knowledge and which makes what we know really practical and 

 worth while. That characteristic, which, for lack of a better word, we call char- 

 acter. It is a man's character that comes out when he is put to the test of skill 

 or knowledge or quick judgment and hours of careful scientific preparation. It 

 is thus that the long months of careful training in the laboratory begin to teach 

 their lessons not only of knowledge but of those habits and that power which 

 constitute character. Thus it is that the lessons and recitations which have been 

 heard, together bear their fruit in specific man, and the man rises to the full 

 height of his professional responsibility and is worthy of association with his 

 elders when he responds to the call and shows himself able to be a man and 

 serve society by the use of his knowledge and character. 



But, my friends, if we were to stop there we should have covered only one- 

 half of the problem which lies before this company of hopeful and ambitious 

 men. We should have taught the unfortunate and imperfect lesson that a man 

 "eed only attend to his own concerns to be a useful, helpful and successful 

 citizen. The contrary is the fact. We are just beginning to see in this country 

 of ours how unfortunate are the results when men concern themselves wholly 

 and solely with their own afifairs from their own point of view and forget their 

 responsibility to the public as a whole. That responsibility we express in terms 

 of citizenship, and the educated man or trained professional man, whether he be 

 engineer or architect or clergyman or teacher or lawyer or physician or pharma- 

 cist, who is not at once a professional man and a citizen, has only responded to 

 a part of the possibilities which He before him; and I know that if the ideals 

 of this profession, which is primarily a profession of useful service, mean any- 

 thing; if they find expression, as I know they did, in the teaching and example 

 of those who have gone before this class, then the responsibility which rests 

 upon these men is the two-fold responsibility of good professional men and good 



