THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL. 
SECOND SERIES. 
YOL. V.—No. IY.—OCTOBER 1st, 1S63. 
KNOWLEDGE A SOURCE 
OF POWER. 
END. 
•THE MEANS TO THE 
Man is ever seeking for power, and the desire to attain it is one of the 
strongest incentives to the acquirement of knowledge; yet it frequently happens 
that when the means for the attainment of knowledge are provided, compara¬ 
tively few avail themselves of the opportunity presented to them. It cannot 
be doubted that knowledge is a source of power. Why, then, do not all who 
desire the power seek after knowledge as the means to the end? There is 
perhaps a lingering doubt as to the kind of knowledge best calculated to give 
the power sought for. 
In the discussions which from time to time occur with reference to the qualifi¬ 
cation of chemists and druggists, it is sometimes represented that a chemist may 
have too much knowledge of chemistry, and a druggist be too well acquainted 
with the natural history of drugs ; that scientific attainments are of little value 
to practical men of business, and that all that is required in the chemist and 
druggist is that practical knowledge which every man can gain behind the 
druggist’s counter. It is obvious that if this position be entirely correct, the 
Pharmaceutical Society has been founded upon a wrong basis, and those who 
have been striving to carry out its objects have no just grounds to complain of 
the lukewarmness, indifference, or even opposition with which they have been 
met by many from whom they looked for a very different reception. 
The position in the form in which we have put it is neither wholly true nor 
altogether untrue. A chemist and druggist need not be very profound as a 
chemist or naturalist; there would be no adequate scope for such attainments 
in his ordinary business occupations, nor sufficient remuneration to compensate 
for the cost of its acquirement; yet some amount of scientific knowledge is de¬ 
sirable, and an excessive or undesirable amount is not probable as the result of 
any system of education provided for pharmaceutical students. Should there 
be those who by dint of great industry and natural abilities attain to an amount 
of scientific eminence with which their occupations as pharmaceutists may be 
uncongenial, they would no doubt rise to their proper sphere, like Liebig, Dumas, 
and others, while the profession in the study and pursuit of which the founda¬ 
tion for their future reputation was laid would reap the honour of having contri¬ 
buted such bright examples of scientific celebrities. But such cases are of very 
rare occurrence, and the acquirement of too much knowledge need not be 
feared ; yet there is just enough of truth in the position stated to enable men who 
deal in vague assertions to represent the system of instruction provided and 
VOL. V. M 
