THE AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACY. 
5 
3. A general acquaintance with the physiological action and influence on the 
living body of the chief medicines in use. 
Of course this last recommendation may seem less necessary than the others, and is 
not in any way to be understood as giving any support in the direction of encouraging 
any deviation from the path of legitimate Pharmacy into the domain of medicine. But 
no one ought to he considered an accomplished or safe dispenser of medicine without such 
knowledge, and now much more is properly required. In fact, the future pharmacist will, 
as education and accurate knowledge extend, be expected to be a man of wide and 
liberal education and knowledge — the honest and faithful servant of the public, the 
reliable aid to the physician, and the opponent of all forms of quackery. 
Now a word to those who are to be the upholders of this ideal in the next and succeeding 
generation : I mean the students. Students, — You are now just upon the threshold of your 
life-work. The close watchfulness of parents can no longer be extended to you. You 
have been watched and tended by anxious and hopeful parents — parents who have 
denied themselves many things in order that you might have the advantages to be 
derived from a sound training and education. You must always live with a vivid sense 
of this. Tender hearts are beating for you and waiting for the result of your industry and 
conscientious devotion to your studies ; but the home influence is no longer around you 
as formerly. Many temptations will assail you, but ever live and work as in u your Great 
Taskmaster’s eye.” To all temptations, whether to indolence, neglect of study, or to 
vice of all kinds, like men w r ho realise the importance of your destiny, resolutely say No ! 
Let it be your everlasting No, and, having chosen your path, walk in it ; your time for 
“ choice is brief, and yet endless.” Now, and now only, is your opportunity. How inex- 
pressibly sad will be your feelings in the future, how lacerated will be the hearts of those 
good and waiting parents of yours, if you should be led away by weakness and folly to 
failure, or, what would be infinitely more painful, dishonour. Let your watchwords be 
Duty, Industry, and Love of Truth ! Nulla dies , sine lined. 
Like a star that maketh not haste, 
That taketh not rest, 
Each one fulfilling his God-given hest. 
My colleagues take a kindly interest in your future and present welfare. Nothing 
affords us greater pleasure than to find that you profit by your studies ; nothing gives us 
more pain than having to reject you at the examinations ; but for your benefit, in the 
interest of pharmaceutical progress, and, above all, in the paramount interest of the 
public — the sick and suffering — we are bound to see that the diploma which is given 
has a real value : that it is a guarantee of knowledge gained and practical ability 
acquired. You have already given us some promise in having passed the Preliminary 
Examination. 
Now you have to grapple with all the power of will you possess — the full force of 
which is only half employed, I fear, by any of us — with Chemistry, Materia Medica , and 
Botany. 
k ou, perhaps, now, do not know even the Alphabet of these sciences, but be in no 
way cast down by early difficulties ; you will — as others who have trod the ground 
before you — find them vanish one by one, until you, in full intellectual strength, find 
that you have conquered, that you have become the possessor of that power which 
knowledge only can give, and, I do not hesitate to say, that which far outweighs mere 
intellectual gain and advantage — resources which will afford you profitable work, solid 
comfort and enjoyment, the means of doing good, and, above all, an abiding sense of the 
divine beauty of this wonderful world of ours : how it is governed by unerring and 
unchanging laws, which, if we are to be happy, must be obeyed. Above all the sciences 
Chemistry is of most value. A knowledge of Chemistry opens before our wondering gaze 
untold riches : shows us beauties and utilities unseen before. Our bodies are chemical 
laboratories, making and unmaking all sorts of chemical compounds of infinite 
complexity. The vegetable world is the result of chemical changes and processes of 
wonderful beauty. 
Changed through all, and yet in all the same. 
\ et, when looking upon the glories of a summer landscape, with lovely flowers around 
us and under our feet, how faintly does the uneducated mind and eye realise all its 
greatness ! But to the eye of the chemist how much greater the wonder and beauty, for 
