THE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



163 



same, applied to Materia Medica ; and 

 Question 18. "Should candidates for 

 graduation in pharmacy be able to make 

 all preparations, a process for which is 

 given in the United States Pharma- 

 copoeia ?" are obviously directly answer- 

 ed by my opening proposition. 



Questions ig and 12 are only partly 

 answered by this standard. 



No. 19 asks, " Where, in pharmacy 

 teaching, are the limits between practi- 

 cal and impractical knowledge, and what 

 constitutes a practical examination?" 

 Any instruction which properly finds a 

 place in a school of pharmacy does not 

 admit of a division into the practical and 

 impractical, except as to a merely for- 

 mal and technical division. A knowledge 

 of the fundamental theories essential be- 

 fore taking up practice is in its spirit 

 quite as practical as the subsequent ap- 

 plication of those theories. To limit the 

 adjective "practical " to the subsequent 

 instruction in which the student is set 

 to applying this knowledge is perhaps 

 necessary, but it is liable to mislead as 

 to the real nature of the fundamental in- 

 struction. 



Question 12. " How can dull and lazy 

 students, in colleges of pharmacy, be 

 kept as near as possible abreast of the 

 work done by the intelligent and dili- 

 gent?" The progress of the student in 

 acquiring command of U. S. P. methods 

 should be tested at frequent intervals. 

 As soon as found deficient, he should be 

 returned to the preceding form and made 

 to work and to pay for the same over 

 again. This process should be repeated 

 until he comes up to the mark or grows 

 weary and betakes himself to some neigh- 

 boring diploma mill. 



Question No. 2. "Should such stu- 

 dents give their whole time during col- 

 lege years to study, or divide it between 

 attending college and working in a 

 store?" This question cannot be decided 

 upon any general principle. Each col- 

 lege should he left entirely free to render 

 an individual decision. If a college 

 which is favorably located and circum- 

 stanced has tound by long experience 



that the incorporation of drug store train- 

 ing into its course has resulted in pro- 

 ducing clerks who are preferred by em- 

 ployers and druggists, a larger percent- 

 age of whom make business successes, 

 they should not be coerced into aban- 

 doning this system because other col- 

 leges are less favorably circumstanced or 

 have been misled into taking a different 

 view. 



This discussion would not be complete 

 without reference to other instruction 

 than that demanded as a minimum by 

 my opening proposition. It is to be re- 

 membered that our Pharmacopoeia is not 

 perfect or complete. It does not aim to em- 

 body at once the requirements which are 

 impractical for a majority of pharmacists 

 in the present state of the profession, but it 

 aims to add such requirements gradually, 

 and it looks to pharmaceutical education 

 to prepare the way for such addition. It 

 is therefore at least highly important 

 that pharmacy schools should to a mod- 

 erate extent exceed the absolute require- 

 ments of the current edition of the Phar- 

 macopoeia, supplementing with instruc- 

 tion suitable to such advances in the work 

 as are likely, or desirable, to be made at 

 the next succeeding revision. 



The business of a pharmacist being 

 what it is, and the virtual object of the 

 student in attending a pharmaceutical 

 school being to fit himself for safely and 

 successfully conducting that business, it 

 follows that there is much extra phar- 

 macopoeial work to be done in instruct- 

 ing him, or at least in determining that he 

 has been otherwise so instructed, before 

 conferring his degree ; as to how much, 

 ideas are likely to continue to differ 

 widely, according to the field of vision 

 of the respective observer. 



In conclusion, I would emphasize the 

 fact that, in the opinion of your speaker, 

 the instruction above demanded is only 

 such as relates to work leading to the 

 degree of graduate in pharmacy. Care 

 has been taken to avoid trenching on the 

 subject of post-graduate instruction and 

 post-graduate degrees. 



