422 
Educational  Qualification. 
( Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
I  September,  1904. 
what  they  say  to  themselves,  to  each  other,  and  to  their  parents, 
about  pharmacy. 
It  is  against  such  discouragements  of  low  standards,  and  by  virtue 
of  the  innate  merits  of  pharmacy  itself,  that  a  good  number  of  stu- 
dents of  full  college  preparation  still  enter  upon  thorough  courses 
of  pharmaceutical  study  in  university  schools. 
When  I  received  the  circular  letter  of  Dean  Searby,  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  California  School  of  Pharmacy,  a  few  weeks  ago,  I  confess 
to  having  felt  some  humiliation,  that  he  should  ask  the  Conference 
of  Colleges  to  do  no  more  than  this,  to  require  for  college  entrance 
one  high-school  year  in  1905-6,  two  high-school  years  in  1906-7, 
and  so  on.  But  upon  reflection  I  agree  with  him  and  with  others, 
that  any  standard  in  general  education,  providing  an  annual  advance 
leading  up  to  the  equivalent  of  high-school  graduation,  faithfully 
adopted,  .deserves  to  be  supported.  To  begin  with,  it  publishes  the 
poverty  of  pharmaceutical  education,  and  opens  out  the  danger  of 
neglect.  Let  us  not  shrink  from  open  confession.  Evils  must  be 
seen  and  declared.  It  is  not  too  late  to  begin.  New  York  is  a  little 
in  advance  of  Michigan  in  the  date  prefixed  for  the  high-school 
requirement.  In  their  college  standards,  however,  the  exclusive 
policy  of  eastern  States  is  by  no  means  to  be  coveted  by  Michigan. 
For  the  pharmacy  board  to  require  the  diploma  of  colleges  up  to 
this  time  wholly  destitute  of  an  entrance  standard  would  never  be  a 
matter  of  pride  in  this  State.  We  have  set  a  better  example  for 
fully  twenty  years.  To  this  the  hundreds  of  New  York  and  Penn- 
sylvania graduates  of  the  Michigan  University  bear  witness,  as  do 
the  students  of  pharmacy  who  continue  to  come  to  Ann  Arbor  from 
the  eastern  States. 
At  present,  however,  I  fully  believe  that  the  immediate  future  ot 
pharmacy  depends  mainly  upon  the  general  education ;  that  is  to 
say,  the  personal  quality  of  its  recruits.  Young  men  of  real  ability 
and  ambition,  those  who  can  adapt  themselves  to  the  shifting  de- 
mands of  pharmaceutical  business  and  to  its  fast  coming  discoveries, 
are  the  men  to  save  pharmacy  as  a  distinct  pursuit.  Pharmacy  itself 
will  educate  such  men.  No  other  profession  does  more  to  educate 
and  develop  its  practitioners — those  capable  of  meeting  the  oppor- 
tunities of  the  time. 
As  a  merely  mercantile  pursuit,  it  is  hardly  probable  that  phar- 
macy could  maintain  a  separate  existence  very  long,  certainly  not 
