THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY 
AUGUST,  i goo. 
A  COMMERCIAL  TRAINING  COURSE  IN  COLLEGES  OF 
PHARMACY.1 
By  Joseph  P.  Remington. 
Colleges  of  pharmacy  were  created  for  the  purpose  of  training 
young  men  in  their  vocation.  Naturally  and  primarily,  their  first 
function  is  to  make  students  proficient  in  technic,  and  when  the 
colleges  were  founded  in  America,  chemistry  and  materia  medica 
were  recognized  as  foundation  studies,  and  they  are  considered  as 
such  to-day. 
The  early  history  of  pharmaceutical  education  reveals  a  curious, 
but,  nevertheless,  strong  tendency  to  thwart  and  oppose  the  efforts 
of  the  far-sighted  pioneers  who  saw  in  the  education  and  training 
of  the  young  the  gradual  uplifting  of  the  craftsmen  who  were 
intrusted  with  the  responsible  duties  of  making  and  dispensing 
medicines. 
Very  slowly  the  colleges  fought  their  way,  and  it  required  nearly 
half  a  century  of  earnest  self-sacrificing  labor  to  demonstrate  the 
fact,  which  should  have  been  recognized  from  the  beginning,  that 
education  was  a  key  which  would  solve  mysteries  and  develop 
great  possibilities. 
In  some  cases,  undoubtedly,  self-interest  on  the  part  of  the 
employer,  or  petty  jealousy,  led  a  preceptor  to  advise  an  assistant 
to  keep  away  from  colleges ;  that  he,  himself,  had  no  use  for  these 
expensive  and  time-consuming  new-fangled  ideas,  but  that  he 
could  learn  from  his  "boss"  far  more  than  those  upstart  teachers 
xRead  at  the  annual  meeting  of  the  Pennsylvania  Pharmaceutical  Associa- 
tion, June,  1900. 
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