ADDRESS. 
91 
agency it has exercised in promoting the advancement of our 
race, by communicating a power over external circumstances, 
through efficient instruments, which have been successfully 
employed with this effect. In attributing to Pharmacy the 
credit of bestowing innumerable advantages which are now 
possessed, it must be regarded as a comprehensive science, 
embodying a number of subsidiary departments, each of 
which has a separate sphere of usefulness. However inde- 
pendent they may appear of a parent stock, it should be borne 
in mind, that they were originally the offspring ofpharmaceutic 
investigation, and in their infancy were sustained by the 
fostering care and nourishment which this afforded. The ob- 
jects that first excited attention, were the articles composing, 
or likely to contribute to the materia medica; the researches 
instituted were such as would lead to a more extensive 
acquaintance with their nature, peculiarities, mutual relations, 
and uses. The first naturalists and natural philosophers were 
pharmaceutists, who entered upon an exploration of the 
material world, solely with the desire to add to their facilities 
of practice. With so extensive a field, it could not be other- 
wise than that an abundant harvest of discovery should reward 
the labor of observation and experiment, and that knowledge, 
general as well as particular in its application, should be eli- 
cited; to this is to be traced the birth of Chemistry, Botany, 
Zoology, Mineralogy, and Natural Philosophy, the branches 
of which Pharmacy is composed. It is not essential to enter 
into the details,by an exposition of which it could be shown, that 
these sciences have been of indispensable service in promoting 
the arts, whereby the lowest member of a civilized and refined 
community is incomparably superior to the savage — they are 
known to every one who is the least conversant with the sub- 
ject: Agriculture, Manufactures, Commerce, and even Litera- 
ture, have been more or less indebted to them. Surely, then, it 
is not an assumption to assert, that Pharmacy has performed a 
conspicuous part in working a favorable change upon the physi- 
cal as well as moral condition of mankind, in revolutionizing 
the aspect of the social state. Hence it is entitled to a larger 
proportion of respect and gratitude. 
