THE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



6i 



THR PHARMACIST AND HIS EDU= 

 CATION. 



FROM PERSONAL CONTACT WITH PHARMACISTS 

 RUNNING BACK MANY YEARS. 



By ARTHUR H. ELLIOTT, Ph D. 

 College of Pharmacy of the City of New York. 



We have often been lead to tliink of 

 the value of the pharmacists' education, 

 and the best way of acquiring it. After 

 many such periods of meditation we have 

 been forced to exclaim, " Alas, what 

 shall we do ? " The number of diihculties 

 we have to encounter at the very be- 

 ginning of the problem are so discourag- 

 ing that we may add to the above ex- 

 clamation, "What may we do?" To- 

 day the instructor in pharmacentical 

 education has two very important ob- 

 stacles placed in his path. First, the 

 State insists that before a diploma is 

 given to a graduate in pharmac}^ he 

 must have had some years' experience in 

 a pharmacy where physician's prescrip- 

 tions are dispensed. To our mind this is 

 the most absurd requirement ever insisted 

 upon by a set of intelligent men. With 

 a large experience among j^oung men 

 coming from stores to a college life and 

 fulfilling the above requirement of the 

 law, we are satisfied that often it were 

 better they had never seen such a place 

 as a drug store, if the habits they have 

 acquired there are a sign of the methods 

 followed in a place where physicians' 

 prescriptions are dispensed. When these 

 young men come to us, we have to fight 

 against the habits so acquired, for many 

 months before we can begin to see the 

 results of sowing the first seed for their 

 true education. In conjunction with 

 this absurd law comes the second diffi- 

 culty we have mentioned. Since the 

 young student must get this so-called 

 practical education in a store, he hires 

 his services for a very small amount (or 

 perhaps he has to give such services) 

 that he may follow the letter of the law. 



There is no system of apprenticeship, he 

 does what he is told to do. This often 

 means the veriest drudgery from early 

 morning' to late at night. He is porter 

 and salesman and very little else for two 

 or more years, in a place where physi- 

 cians' prescriptions are dispensed by 

 somebody else. Legally he must not put 

 up such prescriptions alone and the 

 proprietor of the store is often too busy 

 to show him how, or to wait to see the 

 young man do it himself. In fact the 

 whole system of so-called practical ex- 

 perience in a pharmacy as now carried 

 out is a farce. The law is absurd because 

 it is not definite enough in regard to the 

 relations between the young man and 

 the proprietor of the store, and further- 

 more the education often acquired under 

 such circumstances has to be broken 

 down and remodelled in the college life 

 afterwards. And even where we have 

 college and store life together, the hard- 

 ships endured by the students in order to 

 comply with the law, speak loudly for 

 the patience and industry of the young 

 men entering the pharmaceutical profes- 

 sion. The student who has to follow a 

 store life, at the same time that he goes 

 to college, labors under enormous diffi- 

 culties in getting time to study and digest 

 what his instructors have given him. He 

 often has to be in the store from 7 A. M. 

 to II P. M. and get to and from college 

 on schedule time. Squeezing his educa- 

 tion into his laboring days like this, is it 

 a wonder that you hear so many young 

 men say, " it is a slave's life? " If he 

 gets time to study his college subjects, it 

 is in the small hours of the night, wlien 

 he should be resting for the labors of the 

 following day. 



Such we conceive to be a reasonably 

 fair picture ot the situation to-day as re- 

 gards the education of the pharmacist. 

 The obvious remedy is to abolish this 

 store life, and allow the student to get 



