2o6 
Editorial. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
April,  1920. 
quired  of  those  entering  schools  of  pharmacy  has  been  advanced 
and  in  the  near  future  all  students  admitted  to  the  recognized  schools 
of  pharmacy  in  the  United  States  will  have  had  at  least  a  preliminary 
education,  the  equivalent  of  a  standard  four  years'  high  school  course. 
The  American  Conference  of  Pharmaceutical  Faculties  has  been 
a  potent  factor  in  determining  that  prerequisite  education  was  an 
initial  step  that  must  be  taken  to  establish  pharmacy  on  a  profes- 
sional basis.  A  number  of  the  states  now  require  by  enactment 
that  those  licensed  to  practice  pharmacy  must  be  graduates  from 
approved  schools  of  pharmacy  and  prior  to  such  pharmaceutical 
education  shall  have  had  a  standard  fundamental  education.  It  is 
imperative  that  such  laws  should  be  enacted  in  every  state  so  that 
prerequisite  education  for  pharmacists  will  be  a  universal  require- 
ment in  the  United  States. 
The  claim  that  this  would  work  a  hardship  cannot  be  main- 
tained as  throughout  the  United  States  opportunity  is  now  afforded, 
through  the  public  school  system,  for  every  youth  to  acquire  at 
least  a  high  school  education.  When  the  first  school  of  pharmacy 
was  established,  and  for  some  years  thereafter,  it  was  the  exceptional 
boy  or  girl  who  had  the  opportunity  of  attending  high  school,  but 
now  this  is  the  common  privilege  of  all. 
While  pharmaceutic  educators  have  been  making  strenuous 
efforts  to  provide  for  a  fundamental  education,  they  have  not  paid 
the  attention  deserved  to  the  necessity  for  a  more  thorough  training 
of  their  graduates.  With  the  great  advances  made  in  the  medical 
profession  and  the  constant  additions  to  our  materia  medica  and  the 
progress  of  the  sciences,  the  knowledge  required  of  the  pharmacist  is 
necessarily  many  times  that  expected  a  century  ago.  The  colleges 
have  endeavored  to  supply  this  extended  knowledge  by  establishing 
chairs  and  instructions  in  many  branches  of  science  that  were  never 
dreamed  of  as  essential  to  pharmacy  in  the  earlier  decades  of  pharma- 
ceutical education  in  America.  Pharmacognosy,  bacteriology,  clin- 
ical and  pathological  chemistry  and  pharmacodynamic  assaying  and 
commercial  training  are  only  some  of  the  courses  that  have  been 
introduced  into  the  collegiate  education  and  many  of  these  are  in- 
cluded in  the  courses  outlined  in  the  Pharmaceutical  Syllabus. 
Despite  the  fact  that  these  added  courses  mean  many  hours  of 
additional  study  and  application  and  likewise  that  the  commercial 
aspect  of  pharmacy  must  receive  increased  attention  from  the  stu- 
dents, the  colleges  are  still  attempting  to  impart  the  fundamental 
