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THE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



ducted as a trade and in the spirit of a 

 commercial venture, ought to fail. If 

 we use our knowledge to exploit human 

 ailments, to excite men's fears, and to 

 play upon human credulity for gain, we 

 ought most ignominiously to fail. You 

 will be prepared to hear that my own 

 strong conviction is that pharmacy should 

 realize its privilege, and seriously pro- 

 ceed to take steps to accept its responsi- 

 bilities as a profession, and no time 

 should be lost in setting about it. I will 

 only very briefly indicate the steps which 

 are necessary, and trouble you as little as 

 may be with small details. Our entrance 

 examination should be made a much more 

 stringent test of a young man's intel- 

 lectual powers and of his school training 

 than it is. It is useless to expect men to 

 be able to grasp the problems of organic 

 chemistry whose knowledge of mathema- 

 tics has not gone beyond the simple 

 arithmetic which our present examina- 

 tion requires. This examination should 

 include algebra and geometry, the L,atin 

 should be extended to a knowledge of 

 the selected authors beyond a mere cram 

 of the meaning of words, history and 

 geography and a modern language should 

 be included, and the examination should 

 be passed not earlier than at 17 years of 

 age, but before apprenticeship. Follow- 

 ing this should come three years of actual 

 (not nominal) apprenticeship, during 

 which the powers of observation should 

 be cultivated, and by continual exercise 

 in the practical operations of pharmacy, 

 under suitable instruction, all that deft- 

 ness of manipulation and that wise caution 

 in handling things which is character- 

 istic of the trained pharmacist, should be 

 acquired. A large amount of knowledge 

 of the physical characters of drugs and 

 preparations would necessarily be ob- 

 tained during this period, and the ap- 

 prentice whose mind was in his work, 

 would certainly do some reading in con- 

 nection with it. 



Then should come the curriculum, or 

 the period of enforced study upon a Syl- 

 labus taught in recognized colleges and 

 schools throughout the country. This- 

 period should not be for less than twa 

 years, and the whole time of the student 

 should be engaged in training and pre- 

 paring for the work of his life. During 

 this two years, at certain intervals, the 

 progress of the student should be official- 

 ly ascertained, and at the end his fitness 

 to become a pharmacist should be tested 

 by one week or more of examination, writ- 

 ten, oral and practical, in the subjects ot 

 Botany, Chemistry and Materia Medica, 

 and if the result was satisfactory I would 

 give the qualification and title of phar- 

 macist. The training and examination 

 should take the student at least as far — 

 I should advocate further in some direc- 

 tions — as our Major examination, and I 

 would abolish all intermediate names 

 which even suggest qualification. When 

 the pharmacist has undergone this as a 

 minimum of his training and proof of 

 his qualification, I think he will have 

 some right to consider himself, and to be 

 considered by the public, a professional 

 man. But now will arise in your minds 

 the question that having elevated your 

 pharmacist to the status of a professional 

 man, what is he to do and how is he to 

 live ? Medical men to an enormous ex- 

 tent dispense the prescriptions for their 

 own patients, and they are exceedingly 

 emphatic in their protest against the 

 pharmacist prescribing. 



The treatment and cure of disease are 

 the legitimate functions of medicine and 

 pharmacy in co-operation, and no rigid 

 line of demarcation is possible. Broadly 

 the operations of surgery, the diagnosis 

 of disease and prescribing belong to med- 

 icine and the preparation and dispens- 

 ing of the remedies to be used in the 

 treatment of disease belong to phar- 

 macy. 



( To be continued ) 



