PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS SECTION I!. 6l 



science, but as a i)ractising profession it is more ortliodox, and 

 serves some definite social function or some defined State jHirpose, 

 like the callino^ of the unspecialised medical ])ractitioner. Unlike 

 medicine, unfortunately, its major activities are not a matter of 

 human life and death, and it is, therefore, much more difficult to 

 exclude the " quack." The sphere of the analyst is too wide to 

 allow of State specification of his functions. The State cannot 

 interfere with a " fellow who wants to analyse thin,^s," or with 

 one who fancies himself as a consulting chemist. All it can do 

 is to take care that he is not allowed to do State work without 

 recoo^nised (lualifications. This it does do — Government, County, 

 and Miuiicipal Analysts, must all be men of recognised status. The 

 same course of procedure is adopted with members of other prac- 

 tising professions, the malpractice of which only incidentally 

 endangers human life; the electrical engineer, the naval architect, 

 the practitioner of any other group of applied sciences. Since there 

 is no need for the law of the land to guard such professions 

 against a charge of homicide, the community is left to look after 

 its own interests and protect itself against quackery by the exer- 

 cise of its own common sense. All the law can do is to specify 

 that no man .shall stvle himself that which he is not, but in the 

 nature of things it is not easy to interfere with the liberty of 

 the subject in calling himself names. 



The problem has to be faced, however, and if the public is 

 to be protected against the quack, some process of legislative 

 interference with this liberty will have to be devised. The ques- 

 tion is partly a matter for legislative action and partly a matter 

 for organisation along trade union lines. 



The established professions are thus fairly well looked after 

 in regard to the training available for youthful aspirants to their 

 service. A regulation academic course is provided, and the 

 matriculated student knows exactly what he has to do — do a hum- 

 drum rat-rat through the curriculum, taking the ordinary precau- 

 tions against getting " ploughed." Provided the career ofifered is 

 sufficiently respectable, and sufficiently remunerative to outrival 

 the boyish fancy for brick-laying or engine-driving, there will be 

 no dearth of trained men ; and if a sufficient number of pro- 

 fessional plums are Vv^ithin reach, there will be the necessary 

 incentive to ability and energy. The rising tide of students at 

 the Universities, backed by the free education of the secondary 

 schools, will see to it that anything decent and anything orthodox 

 does not lack recruits. 



There is, of course, scope for improvement in all orthodox 

 curricula — vast scope. But the need for improvement and the 

 direction it should take, are usually easy to recognise. Otherwise 

 is it with the more specialised w-orker who hopes to devote his 

 life to research ; more markedly otherwise when his research takes 

 him to the border-lines of his science ; and yet more markedly 

 otherwise when his science is the fundamental one of Chemistry. 



