240 
The  Franklin  Bicentenary. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm 
May,  1906. 
been  sold."  Dr.  Leffmann  is  probably  the  spokesman  for  the  Biakiston 
compends,  for  he  says  in  the  preface:  "It  has  been  said  that  Alexander 
Pope  is  a  poet  whom  everybody  quotes  and  nobody  reads.  It  may 
be  said  of  compends  that  they  are  books  that  most  professors  and 
reviewers  condemn  and  that  nearly  all  students  use."  The  book  of 
St.  Clair  is  more  like  a  small  text-book  dealing  with  the  application 
of  the  Latin  language  to  medical  terminology. 
If  the  publishers  and  authors  did  not  talk  so  much  of  the  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  these  books  that  are  sold,  possibly  the  teachers 
and  writers  of  text-books  would  not  so  seriously  object  to  them. 
That  these  books  have  been  so  extensively  used  in  certain  quarters 
is  probably  in  part  due  to  the  system  of  instruction  in  profes- 
sional schools,  for,  as  pointed  out  by  Dr.  Leffmann,  the  "  students 
are  obliged  to  meet  two  distinct  requirements.  They  must  study  for 
the  knowledge  necessary  for  the  practice  of  the  profession  and  they 
must  study  to  pass  examinations.  The  latter  are  in  so  many  cases 
arbitrary  in  scope,  and  affected  by  the  personal  equation  of  the 
examiner,  that  the  student  cannot  be  blamed  for  resorting  to  a  con- 
cise presentation  ot  the  more  important  facts  of  the  science,  supple- 
menting this  by  notes  of  the  narrower  and  more  strictly  personal 
items  of  the  teaching." 
Students  may  purchase  these  books,  but  in  the  better  schools  the 
students  do  not  use  them  so  extensively  as  is  supposed,  and  it  is  only 
a  matter  of  time  when  the  harvest  in  the  sale  of  these  books  will  be 
over.  Quiz-compends  are  essentially  publishers'  books  ;  men  who 
esteem  their  reputations  should  not  write  them  and  students  who 
wish  to  profit  by  their  reading  had  better  leave  them  alone.  Books 
of  quotations  and  concise  facts  prepared  by  others  may  sometimes 
be  use  ul,  but  a  scholar  can  never  be  made  by  using  such  books 
alone. 
THE  FRANKLIN  BI-CENTENARY  1706- 1906. 
The  two  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  birth  of  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin was  celebrated  in  Philadelphia,  April  17th  to  20th,  1906.  The 
celebration  was  under  the  auspices  of  the  American  Philosophical 
Society  held  at  Philadelphia  for  Promoting  Useful  Knowledge.  This 
society  was  founded  by  Franklin  in  1743,  and  is  the  oldest  scientific 
society  in  America.     Prof.  Edgar  F.  Smith,  Vice-provost  of  the 
