November 9,1872.] 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
373 - 
pulsory attendance at lectures, 'which are not a necessity 
for a pharmaceutical examination. Raise the standard 
of examinations, if so you will, hut allow free trade in 
learning. Whatever the advantages of class teaching, 
they are not a necessity. It may not surprise, yet must 
encourage many a beginner thrown on his own resources, 
to know that there were nine candidates for the first Bell 
Scholarship, and that the first was Mr. Talbot, who was 
located in a small provincial town, and had no help 
but class-books ; that the present holder of the prize 
was self-instructed. How would it have fared with 
these students had they, in addition to proof of their 
talents, been required to demonstrate by their tailors’ 
bills the extent of broadcloth or of tweed they had worn 
out on the forms of a class ? The proposition how the 
Pharmaceutical Council can most effectually aid local 
efforts in affording means of professional education 
amongst us, has become the question of the hour, and 
presuming the subject comes within the scope of this 
address, 1 would not pass it by without comment. 
We possess but one considerable school of phar¬ 
macy, that of London; that school is also singular 
as being subsidized largely out of the funds of the 
Pharmaceutical Society. This fact presents for our con¬ 
sideration the two main questions, Shall the Pharma¬ 
ceutical Society cease to be an educating body, and 
withdraw its contribution to the cost of the London 
school P and, If the time has not yet arrived for the 
Society to declare itself an examining and registering 
body only, in what way shall it continue to exercise its 
double functions ? 
That a corporation empowered to examine should at 
the same time permanently supply that education which 
it is its legal duty to appraise, would be contrary to our 
usages. In your University of Glasgow, I am aware, 
examinations are conducted and education supplied, 
but the offices are held by distinct corporations. 
The voice of a majority having pronounced for a con¬ 
tinuance of the present system, and its extension through¬ 
out our country districts, the Council will be called upon 
shortly to decide upon the best means of carrying out 
this object. It will thus take a decided step towards 
the eventual dissociation of its examining and educa¬ 
tional functions; for as this extension of provincial in¬ 
struction is justified on the ground of its utility, it be¬ 
comes part of our educational scheme to link metropoli¬ 
tan and provincial education into one system,—that is to 
say, so long as the Pharmaceutical Council decide to sup¬ 
port by grants pharmaceutical education, so long must that 
assistance be apportioned between the metropolitan and 
provincial schools. At least, so it appears to me. I do 
not see any grounds on which you can reasonably subsi¬ 
dize a London school and refuse the demands of country 
associations for similar help. Our records from 1852 to 
1868 prove most positively that the encouragement to 
provincial schools of pharmacy was an object dear to the 
hearts of the founders and the promoters of the Pharma¬ 
ceutical Society, and this has ever been atradition amongst 
us. Nor can I regard the pharmaceutical area as a desert 
containing one spring, but dammed up at its source, 
whither those who thirst for instruction must travel to 
drink ; its w r aters should rather flow as far and wide as 
our present needs extend, at least, till impassable ob¬ 
stacles arrest their course. We should expect provincial 
schools to flourish rather than to witness our seats of 
learning confined to capitals. What obtains with us in 
common with other nations in Europe ? 
For centres of teaching must we seek their capitals P 
On the contrary, in Portugal we find Coimbra; in 
Spain, Valladolid, Salamanca, Seville ; in Germany, 
Leipsic, Wittenberg, Heidelberg, Prague; in Sweden, 
Upsala; in England, Oxford and Cambridge. The 
University of Bologna, though proximate to Rome, 
flourished, and boasted of professors whose fame w r as 
European. One old medical school which will ever ex¬ 
cite interest among students of medicine and pharmacy, 
and whose axioms so quaintly declared will never be 
forgotten, was that of Salerno. How many times have 
we run over in our minds the diagnosis of a cold,— 
“ Si fluit ad pectus, dicitur rheuma catarrhus, 
Ad fauces bronchus, ad nares esse coryza;” 
or in discussing with a keen appetite some culinary 
triumph redolent of the sage bush,— 
“ Cur morietur homo, cui semper crescit in hortis 
Salvia salvatrix, naturae conciliatrix ? ” 
Though Abelard attracted, by his expositions of philo¬ 
sophical theology, that immense concourse of listeners in 
the university of Paris, we are told that France, on the other 
hand, en revanche , as they express it, possessed numerous 
provincial universities. St. Andrew’s, Glasgow, and 
Aberdeen led the way for Dublin, Edinburgh, and. London. 
The men who watched over our early institutions were 
not forgetful of these facts, as testified by their enduring- 
desire to foster country schools of pharmacy. They 
raised in the metropolis an edifice destined to be the 
regal home of pharmacy, the source of all titles and 
honour, but with the example before them of the astute 
and patriotic Wolsey, who built his palace in Middlesex, 
but founded a college at Oxford. 
One great result of academical teaching must not be 
overlooked, that esprit de corps which grows up and 
strengthens between young men associated for the same 
object, producing emulation, esteem, and frequently 
enduring friendships. What advantages are thus con¬ 
ferred on the young pharmacist over his predecessor, 
who too frequently regarded every other man in 
the same business as a stranger or a rival F In its 
coming attempts to set provincial education on a secure 
basis, I believe the Council will succeed by a scheme 
thorough, well considered, and liberal to the verge to 
venture. To have attempted is not enough ; it must 
attempt and attempt again, so that it may at any future 
time confidently point to the share it bore in the trial. 
If I may draw any inference from facts, a good school, 
or good pharmaceutical teaching, will be a permanency in 
Glasgow, for here I find myself in a city, the commercial 
importance of which is of somewhat recent date, yet 
boasting of an university whose foundation dates almost 
within the range of mediaeval history, of a school 
still more ancient, and which, at the present day, main¬ 
tains both in increasing efficiency. Having so far 
treated of your professional curriculum, allow me, 
in speaking now of your general education, to re¬ 
mind you that just as working up so much subject mat¬ 
ter as will pass you in a pharmaceutical examination, 
without [such an interest in [your work as begets the 
continuance of your exertions, is not true pharmaceutical 
education, so will the aims of your school-instruction be 
frustrated by a non-continuance of reading and applica¬ 
tion to the subjects of your scholastic terms. For in 
our earlier school days w r e learn somewhat by routine ; 
we study grammar, yet remain on the threshold of litera¬ 
ture ; we acquire a knowledge of facts and dates; we 
commit to memory, yet do not apply or moralize; we 
see results side by side, yet do not compare them ; 
we order our powers in proving mathematical pro¬ 
blems according to stated rules. Now these are 
but the elements of education, and when you hear 
of the advantages or great necessity, of a sound 
education, it is understood that all this school lore 
is but the foundation on which to raise the super¬ 
structure of such knowledge as shall render you the 
brilliant pharmacist of the future, who, with capaci¬ 
ties and ambition, will be a man and not merely an 
unit of the population. For what constitutes a practi¬ 
cal liberal education? Broadly, it may be replied: that 
amount of learning, the result of so much application 
as suffices to discipline the memory, to train the mind so 
that by applying tests to thoughts and ideas it .may 
mature them into conviction, and by detecting sophistis 
