EDITORIAL. 
575 
University  or  Michigan  School  of  Pharmacy. — In  our  September 
number  was  a  notice  of  the  graduating  class  of  this  School,  in  which  we 
ventured  to  doubt  the  propriety  of  giving  the  diploma  of  "  Pharmaceu- 
tical Chemist "  to  students  of  the  school  if  they  had  not  had  shop  prac- 
tice. In  a  letter  since  received  from  Dr.  A.  B.  Prescott,  the  assistant  of 
Prof.  Douglass,  he  says  "  No  requirement  of  training  in  the  shop  is 
made  ;  either  for  admission  to  the  course  or  for  graduation.  Our  school 
believes  it  to  be  quite  as  well  for  the  young  pharmacist,  better  for  his 
employer,  and  far  better  for  the  public  that  scieotific  preparation  for  the 
drug  business  should  precede  experience  in  it.  Some  students  enter  our 
course  after  several  years  of  shop  experience  ;  in  consequence,  they  have 
advantage  in  the  College  of  greater  eagerness.  Others  graduate  to  en- 
gage for  the  first  in  a  drug  store  ;  they  have  thereby  the  advantage  in 
their  vocation  of  a  more  enlightened  experience.  The  course  now  es- 
tablished here  embraces  training,  under  supervision,  at  the  prescription 
stand — actual  work — certainly  as  well  deserving  the  credit  of  responsible 
experience  for  the  pharmaceutical  student,  as  hospital  practice  does  for 
the  medical  student."  This  is  all  well  enough  as  regards  the  preparation 
of  the  student  for  his  pharmaceutical  duties,  but  to  give  a  diploma  to  a 
student  intimating  that  he  is  a  pharmaceutical  chemist,  which  means  an 
apothecary  or  pharmaceutist,  when  he  has  no  practical  familiarity  with 
drugs  and  with  shop  experience,  is  not  right.  The  point  of  the  matter  is 
whether  the  latter  class  leave  the  University  and  offer  themselves  as 
qualified  clerks,  or  whether  they  enter  as  beginners?  In  any  case  the 
school  authorities  should  adopt  some  other  title  for  their  diploma  given 
to  such,  and  not  that  which  in  the  most  thoroughly  practical  English 
Pharmaceutical  School  is  given  by  act  of  Parliament  only  to  accom- 
plished pharmaceutists.    (See  advertisement  sheet.) 
A  course  of  Practical  Chemistry  arranged  for  the  use  of  Medical  Stu- 
dents, by  William  Odling,  M.  B.,  F.R.S.,  Fellow  of  the  College  of  Phy- 
sicians, with  illustrations,  from  the  fourth  and  revised  London  edi- 
tion.   Philadelphia.    Henry  C.  Lea,  1869;  pp.261,  octavo. 
This  little  work  is  intended  to  teach  the  student  practical  chemistry,  and 
is  divided  into  four  chapters.    The  first  treats  of  chemical  reactions  and 
chemical  manipulation  ;  the  second  of  analysis  ;  the  third  of  toxicological 
chemistry,  noticing  the  detection  of  the  principal  mineral  and  vegetable 
poisons  ;  whilst  the  last  part  is  devoted  to  animal  chemistry,  chiefly  of  the 
urine,  normal  and  abnormal,  and  of  calculi  and  the  blood,  and  the  con- 
cluding section  treating  of  bile,  milk  and  bone. 
The  author  has  been  able  to  express  his  meaning  clearly,  whilst  omit- 
ting all  unnecessary  descriptions  of  substances  and  processes,  confining 
his  lessons  to  the  limits  fixed  by  himself.  The  short  range  of  subjects 
for  analysis  specially  interesting  to  the  medical  student  has  shortened  the 
laber  of  the  author,  whilst  sufficient  of  the  details  of  analysis  are  given  in 
