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THE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



his college education first; in the same 

 manner as the engineer, the architect, 

 and other professional men. And let us 

 hope that this time is coming soon. But 

 our present problem is what to teach the 

 young pharmacist in the time at his dis- 

 posal. 



At the beginning of the inquiry we are 

 met by a very serious defect in the ele- 

 mentary education of the young men 

 who come to the preliminary college ex- 

 amination. For some reason or other 

 they are lamentably weak in elementary 

 mathematics, such as proportion, deci- 

 mals, fractions, and the crudest ideas of 

 geometry. This must either be a defect 

 in the schools they have gone through, 

 or else they are taken out of school too 

 soon. This is such an important defect 

 that one of our colleges has arranged a 

 special course of instruction to meet this 

 difficulty; and the success of the move- 

 ment is beyond question; the young men 

 meeting their after-studies with much 

 better equipped minds in this particular. 

 We would therefore urge all students 

 entering college life to study the above 

 branches of mathematics thoroughly, and 

 they will find the time so spent well in- 

 vested. 



Coming now to the college life, we 

 have to consider what the phamacist is 

 as a member of the community. He and 

 the physician are the guardians of the 

 public health, and also the health of the 

 individual family. In the former ca- 

 pacity he should understand certain 

 sanitary problems, and toward the family 

 he should exercise such care that they 

 shall not suffer from poor or weak drugs 

 dispensed from physicians' prescriptions, 

 and that those things that are accessory 

 to the work of the physician shall be of 

 the most approved kind and quality. 



Sanitary problems involve a knowledge 

 of the elementary principles underlying 

 life in communities. This means the 



study of water supply, air, light and 

 ventilation, together with the broad 

 principles governing the control of epi- 

 demics and disease in general. Knowl- 

 edge of this character involves the study 

 of chemistry and physics pretty thor- 

 oughly. This study should be made as 

 vital as possible by bringing the student 

 into actual contact with chemical experi- 

 ments at the beginning of his work; sup- 

 plementing such studies with discussions 

 upon the bearing of the experiments upon 

 life and its problems. 



In regard to the identification of drugs 

 and the chemicals used in prescriptions, 

 chemistry and physics also bear a very 

 important part; but here a good knowl- 

 edge of the microscope and its uses is 

 invaluable. 



In fact the pharmacist should be a 

 good chemist, with considerable knowl- 

 edge of physics and microscopy. Beyond 

 this he will find his work in pharmacy 

 to consist of the application of chemical 

 and physical truths to special cases. 

 Advanced pharmaceutical work is but 

 the elaboration of such chemical and 

 physical knowledge to suit the prepara- 

 tion of special drugs, the testing and 

 purification of chemicals, and the com- 

 pounding of both drugs and chemicals 

 in prescriptions. 



As useful accessories to the above es- 

 sential knowledge for the pharmacist 

 come materia medica and botany. But 

 as far as the time now given to pharma- 

 ceutical education in our colleges is con- 

 cerned, these latter subjects should be 

 given a vihior importance or else dropped 

 out of the curriculum. Materia medica 

 (vegetable materia medica), while inci- 

 dentally useful to the pharmacist, is es- 

 sentially a study for the physician. And 

 there is so little time now for the student 

 to acquire the necessary truths of chem- 

 istry and physics and their application to 

 pharmacy, that every unnecessary de- 



