Pbcembeb 23, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



901 



The revision of the "Pharmacopajia" 

 from such a point of view would be an 

 ideal work, but of course could not be con- 

 sistently carried through at the present 

 time. But a beginning may be made and 

 in this the council may indirectly lend a 

 hand. Our work is primarily for the good 

 of medicine. The physician can not follow 

 the highly specialized developments of 

 physiological chemistry or pharmacology 

 and he has the right to ask that the facts 

 which he needs for use be put before him in 

 sharp and unequivocal terms. In the past 

 physicians have paid too little attention to 

 the actual composition of the remedies they 

 use, leaving this largely to the pharmacist. 

 But in the newer developments in the use 

 of curative agents they must have more of 

 this exact knowledge, and there is no body 

 better qualified than the American Medi- 

 cal Association to collect and classify this 

 knowledge. The work of the association 

 in the cause of medical education has been 

 of enormous value, and the education of the 

 physician in the field of rational therapeu- 

 tics is but a natural and legitimate spe- 

 cialization of the general activity. 



As already intimated it may not be prac- 

 ticable for a body organized as is the pres- 

 ent Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry 

 to proceed with a program as elaborate as 

 the one just suggested. Possibly a new 

 and permanent commission may have to 

 undertake it and a natural outgrowth of 

 the work of such a commission would be 

 the gradual creation of a pharmacopcEia 

 suited to the actual needs of the AmErican 

 physician. J. H. Long 



THE TWOFOLD FUyCTION OF THE 

 UNIVERSITY^ 



The ideal university, like the ideal state, 

 is yet in the Utopian stage. That a vigor- 



'An address delivered on September 28, 1910, 

 at the University of North Dakota on the occji- 

 sion of the inauguration of President Frank L. 



ous university is necessary to the life of a 

 vigorous state is a principle or policy gen- 

 erally admitted and acted upon, not only 

 by the European peoples wherever they are 

 located, but also to an ever-increasing de- 

 gree by those other races of mankind which 

 have been brought under the immediate 

 influence of the dominant civilization of 

 the world. One can, however, still find 

 communities, happily dwindling rapidly 

 in number, on this American continent, 

 where it is necessary to plead for the very 

 existence of a real university. The need of 

 such an institution is obscured by the fact 

 of the community's parasitical dependence 

 upon their more enterprising and far-see- 

 ing neighbors, from whom they get their 

 supply of educated professional men. 



Wherever the university is firmly estab- 

 lished in the appreciative intelligence of 

 the people it is conceived to have many 

 functions. Such are seen in its relation to 

 the state; its relation to the professor; its 

 relation to the student; its relation to the 

 discovery of truth; and its relation to the 

 advancement of the civilization of the 

 world. 



The conception of the university as 

 merely an intellectual restaurant to pre- 

 pare in the most readily assimilable form 

 a certain definite amount of mental food 

 for a certain number of students every 

 year is essentially an unworthy one. Yet 

 I believe it is not an exaggeration to say 

 that a large proportion of the higher in- 

 stitutions of learning in America (I use 

 that word in its geographical sense) have 

 regarded their duty as almost entirely per- 

 formed when their students, having been 

 lectured to with all possible diligence for 

 several years, have been provided with 



:McVey, LL.D., and the celebration of the twenty- 

 fifth anniversary of the founding of the univer- 

 sity. Later this was given as the university 

 address at the opening of the session of the 

 University of 5Ianit«ba. 



