Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  1 
September,  1904.  / 
A  Prerequisite  Law. 
423 
with  regulation  by  State  law,  nor  with  a  body  of  practitioners  re- 
cruited from  the  culls  left  behind  by  the  public-school  system. 
Education,  in  its  fullest  meaning,  has  been  well  said  to  lie  "  in  the 
great  stock  of  ideas  possessed  by  mankind."  Shall  we  have  a  gen- 
eration of  pharmacists  with  the  capacity  of  continued  education  in 
the  commerce  and  the  research  of  this  avocation  ? 
It  is  easy  to  agree  with  Dr.  Henry  E.  Armstrong,  of  London,  as 
chairman  of  the  Mosley  Commission,  in  his  late  report  upon  the 
educational  methods  of  the  United  States,  that  over-teaching  is  the 
tendency  in  certain  of^the  more  advanced  professional  schools,  as 
those  of  medicine  and  law  at  the  present.  Pharmacy  surely  cannot 
be  charged  with  this  excess,  and  the  active  commercial  spirit  of  its 
practice  will  preserve  it  within  healthful  limits.  It  only  remains  to 
look  to  the  personal  quality  of  the  recruits  to  its  ranks  to  make 
pharmacy  a  most  representative  profession  in  the  twentieth  century. 
A  PREREQUISITE  LAW.1 
By  Joseph  P.  Remington. 
"  Is  it  not  time  that  graduation  from  a  college  of  pharmacy  be 
required  before  registration  ?  " 
The  Committee  on  Papers  and  Queries  having  assigned  to  the 
writer  the  above  question,  to  answer  becomes  a  duty  which  is  ac- 
cepted cheerfully.  It  is  recognized  by  not  only  the  leaders,  but  the 
rank  and  file,  that  the  time  has  come  to  demand  a  law  which  will 
compel  graduation  from  a  recognized  college  of  pharmacy  before  a 
license  will  be  granted  to  a  pharmacist  applying  for  examination  for 
the  highest  grade  certificate  from  the  State  Board. 
This  is  not  a  new  subject,  for  it  was  bruited  at  the  very  infancy  of 
pharmaceutical  legislation  in  this  country ;  but  the  opposition  of  a 
number  of  druggists  in  business,  who  were  not  graduates  from  any 
college,  halted  the  movement.  They  seemed  to  be  possessed  with 
the  false  and  selfish  idea  that  to  protect  their  own  standing  they 
were  compelled  to  belittle  pharmaceutical  education  and  decry  its 
merits;  but  "  Truth  crushed  to  earth  will  rise  again."     As  the 
1  Read  at  the  twenty-seventh  annual  meeting  of  the  Pennsylvania  Pharma- 
ceutical Association,  June  21-23,  1904. 
