THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL.  OF  PHARMACY 
NOVEMBER,  1902. 
THE  WRITING  OF  A  THESIS. 
By  A.  R.  Iv.  Dohme,  Ph.D. 
Most  ideas,  as  well  as  most  words,  have  gradually  in  the  course 
of  time  changed  their  original  meaning ;  have,  as  we  say,  become 
modernized  or  brought  up  to  date.  As  our  views  and  knowledge 
of  any  subject  become  more  and  more  extensive,  we  change  them, 
and  at  any  given  time  their  generally  interpreted  and  understood 
meaning  represents  the  sum  of  all  the  knowledge  that  has  been 
gained  up  to  that  time.  Because  we  once  thought  the  earth  flat ; 
lightning,  the  manifestation  of  the  devil ;  earth,  air,  fire  and  water  the 
four  elements,  is  no  reason  why  we  should  do  so  to-day,  when 
knowledge  obtained  since  the  days  in  which  the  poor  unfortunates 
who  so  believed  lived  has  shown  us  that  they  were  wrong.  The  sub- 
ject of  my  paper,  the  word  "  Thesis,"  has  in  a  similar  way  under- 
gone somewhat  of  a  change  since  the  days  of  Martin  Luther  and 
his  contemporaries.  Those  strenuous  lights  of  the  Middle  Ages 
regarded  a  thesis  as  the  height  of  their  ambition,  and  any  one  who 
could  establish  a  thesis  and  maintain  it  in  the  face  of  the  enemy  was 
a  made  man.  While  we  have  strenuous  men  nowadays,  and  we  do 
things  strenuously  to  a  greater  extent  probably  than  they  did  even 
at  the  time  of  that  immortal  Henry,  who  defied  State,  Church  and 
the  Devil,  to  prevent  him  from  doing  just  whatever  his  whim  dictated, 
even  to  the  extent  of  changing  wives  several  times  a  month,  still, 
when  it  comes  to  a  thesis,  we  are  only  satellites  of  a  very  small  mag- 
nitude as  compared  with  the  author  of  the  Reformation,  or  the  great 
reformers  of  Wittenberg  or  Geneva.    The  word  "  thesis  "  is  derived 
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