24 1 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. [September 28, 1872. 
sengers for nothing, and I have even heard of a 
spirited competitor, who, in such a case, has offered 
to give a bottle of wine into the bargain. The pro¬ 
moters of pharmaceutical education and advance¬ 
ment have acted upon a somewhat similar principle, 
but with a much better motive to justify their con¬ 
duct. 
Now, is it necessary to perpetuate the system of 
subsidising our schools ? Can we not make them 
independent? Treating them as the offspring of the 
Pharmaceutical Society, would it not be the natural 
solicitude of a parent to see them capable of taking 
care of themselves ? Yet a just and judicious parent, 
after petting and spoiling a child, and making it de¬ 
pendent on home for all its resources, would not at 
once cast it off without capital to start with on its 
own account, or any remunerative occupation on 
which to depend for its future support. The society 
under the pressure of circumstances has made the 
business of pharmaceutical education an unpro¬ 
fitable one. It has spoilt the education market, and 
it owes it as an imperative duty alike to teachers 
and students, to endeavour to put the process of 
school teaching on a more satisfactory footing before 
withdrawing the support it has hitherto so liberally 
afforded. 
Why should pharmaceutical students expect to 
have expensively illustrated lectures provided for 
them at a charge of 2%d. a lecture while the usual 
charge for similar lectures elsewhere is about two 
shillings? At the Government school of Mines, a 
school established at considerable cost to the Go¬ 
vernment, and conducted on terms not illiberal to 
students, the fee for attendance at forty lectures oil 
inorganic chemistry is PI, or at the rate of two shil¬ 
lings a lecture; whereas the fee for attendance at 
more than a hundred lectures delivered in the school 
of the Pharmaceutical Society on chemistry and 
pharmacy and the physics relating thereto, is twenty- 
one shillings, or at the rate of two pence-halfpenny 
a lecture. 
It may be questioned whether at any time it was 
sound policy to depreciate in this way the value of 
lecture teaching, by charging fees which are so 
utterly at variance with those usually charged, and 
so disproportionate even to the bare cost of their 
production. Our two-penny lectures are no doubt 
often estimated at the value we attach to them, and 
the society that provides them at considerable sacri¬ 
fice and expense is barely thanked for its liberality. 
But admitting that there was sufficient justification 
for the course originally adopted in providing lec¬ 
tures at a cost to tlie students which left them no 
excuse for not availing themselves of such means of 
instruction, the same thing cannot be said with re¬ 
ference to the future. The law now renders educa¬ 
tion necessary, and those who provide it are entitled 
to be paid a fair value for the benefits conferred in 
meeting the demand thus created. 
It is neither just nor fair, since the occasion for 
it has ceased, that we should continue the practice 
of underselling in the lecture-market. We have 
not done so with our practical classes, and it has 
been shown that as regards mere current expenses, 
they can be made self-supporting. May we not hope 
to see the lecture classes put, perhaps not suddenly, 
but gradually, upon an equally satisfactory footing ? 
I think it is the duty of the Society to endeavour 
to accomplish this object. It would be a manifest 
injustice to throw the burden of an unprofitable 
undertaking on to the professors, and to expect them 
to take the responsibility of providing education for 
a class of students who have been led to believe that 
it would be supplied to them at merely nominal 
fees. 
I do not even think, if the Society could and 
should bring about such a change in regard to 
lecture arrangements as would assimilate the fees 
with those charged for similar lectures in other 
schools, that it would be practicable to meet all ex¬ 
penses from this source, that is, to pay for premises, 
and stock-in-trade, as well as to meet current ex¬ 
penses, out of the fees paid by students. Something 
must be done in the wav of endowment. Our 
*/ 
practical school in Bloomsbury Square was liberally 
endowed by Jacob Bell, in addition to what has 
been done for it b}^ the Society. The lectures in the 
same school may also be said to be endowed, by the 
stock of apparatus and specimens in the museums 
and elsewhere, and the premises, the use of which is 
supplied by the Society. Without these where and 
what would the school be ? 
But here a question presents itself. It may be 
asked, how can we approve of endowment, and at 
the same time condemn subsidisement ? I think 
there is a wide difference between them which 
justifies our doing so. Endowment gives strength, 
while subsidisement represents and engenders weak¬ 
ness. The one is capital indicating power, and the 
other is pension indicating dependence, and im- 
plying deficiency of energy or renunciation of effort. 
All our best schools are endowed, but not subsidised. 
I cannot conceive it possible to establish schools 
such as we require without endowment. What have 
we been doing for the Chicago College of Pharmacy ? 
And have we not stronger claims at home, for the 
endowment of schools for our own students ? 
It appears to me that there are two objects the 
Society ought to aim at, namely, first to establish a 
scale of lecture and class fees sufficient to meet the 
current expenses of the central school, over which it 
has complete control, and when the change involved 
in the accomplishment of this object has been fairly 
tested and found to be effectual, to proceed in the 
next place to the endowment of the school to a 
sufficient extent to ensure its permanence and 
efficiency, without further aid from the Society. 
In carrying these objects into effect, increased 
facilities would be given for the starting of provincial 
schools with some prospect of success. If a scale 
of remunerating fees were adopted at the central 
school, a similar system would naturally follow and 
could be more easily maintained in the provinces. 
Means would thus be afforded of ascertaining to 
what extent and where further school accommoda¬ 
tion was required and could be creditably and 
efficiently supported. Such schools in due course 
would claim, and no doubt receive assistance from 
the Society, as well as from those more immediately 
connected with them, who would be required to con¬ 
tribute in some way to their endowment. 
It has been represented that any attempt to 
establish and maintain schools affording complete 
and thorough pharmaceutical education, must fail 
while the prevailing system of coacliing or cramming 
pupils is allowed to exist. I do not agree with 
tills opinion, but of course if the cost of attending 
our recognised schools should be increased, the 
