THE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



taken from the same stock -containers as 

 those from which the students are sup- 

 plied. A laboratory guide-book of his 

 own authorship constitutes the important 

 literary adjunct of Prof. Elliott's course. 

 The study is thus made pureh 7 inductive, 

 and each student is made to a certain ex- 

 tent the actual discoverer of his principles, 

 at the same time acquiring proper 

 methods of technique. Prof. Elliott is 

 ably assisted by George A. Ferguson, 

 Ph.B., and by Mr. Richard J. Reilly, 

 who has grown up from boyhood in the 

 Professor's laboratory. In the interim of 

 the laboratory exercises, and the same is 

 true of each of the other departments of 

 instruction, the student undergoes a 

 "quizz" by the instructor, his proficiency 

 being determined by a merciless probing, 

 at the same time that any loose ends in 

 the instruction are neatly taken up. 

 The method of teaching botany , which de- 

 partment is under the charge of the present 

 writer, is the outgrowth of the peculiar re- 

 quirements of students of pharmacy and of 

 the conditions existing in our own institu- 

 tion, and is quite distinct from any 

 methods employed elsewhere, either in 

 this country or abroad. The subject 

 matter is limited to those details of plant 

 structure which the student will find 

 necssary in his senior year in learning to 

 identify drugs, and the method is based 

 upon the most advanced principles of ob- 

 ject teaching and their most complete 

 application. 



Thirty lectures of one hour each are 

 illustrated, in addition to the ordinary 

 auxiliaries of chart and blackboard draw- 

 ing, by a series of student's cards, bear- 

 ing specimens typically illustrative of the 

 points of structure under discussion. Of 

 each card there are enough copies to sup- 

 ply all the students, and each bears some 

 ten or fifteen specimens. Each lecture is 

 illustrated by one or more of these cards, 

 so that the total number ot specimens 



utilized at these lectures amounts to some- 

 thing over one hundred thousand. Per- 

 haps the quality of the student life repre- 

 sented at our institution is in no way so 

 well shown as by the fact that the annual 

 breakage of this vast amount of such 

 very fragile material, in the hands of 

 so large a class, scarcely reaches five 

 per cent. In the interim between 

 lectures, not only are the legular 

 college quizzes applied in this depart- 

 ment, but the class, divided into small 

 sections, study similar specimens in a 

 practical manner by means of dissections 

 and analyses, this practice extending 

 over a period of one hour weekly for 

 thirty weeks. As the examinations must 

 be made both with the simple and com- 

 pound microscopes, this department is 

 made the occasion forgiving the students 

 that most important instruction in the art 

 of microscopy, without which perfect 

 pharmaceutical work can scarcely be per- 

 formed. Efficient assistance is rendered 

 in this department by Smith Ely Jelliffe, 

 M. D , as instructor, a gentleman whose 

 original contributions to science have es- 

 tablished his reputation as botanist, mi- 

 croscopist and physician. 



The teaching in ph\siology, also un- 

 der the charge of the writer, while 

 restricted, is by no means elementary. 

 Elementary teaching in this subject is 

 entirely inadequate to fit the student for 

 understanding the action of medicines as 

 taught in the senior year. Eighteen 

 lectures are devoted to pointing out the 

 ultimate nature of the bodily functions 

 so far as known ; the important ways in 

 which they become disordered by dis- 

 ease, and the manner in which medicines 

 act upon them ; this instruction furnish- 

 ing the basis for a scientific classification 

 of medicines. 



The work of the department of phar- 

 macy constitutes the objective end of the 

 student's course, to which all that of the 



