530        Education  and  Legislation  in  Pharmacy.    { XSet S?* 
EDUCATION  AND  LEGISLATION  IN  PHARMACY.1 
By  Oscar  Oi^dberg. 
Our  Pharmacy  Laws.- — Lord  Chancellor  Coke  of  England  said 
that  "  Law  is  the  perfection  of  reason."  But  Lord  Coke  lived  at  the 
end  of  the  sixteenth  and  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century.: 
He  had  never  seen  our  American  pharmacy  laws  which  are  products 
of  the  nineteenth  and  twentieth  centuries.  We  have  made  great 
progress  in  the  past  one  or  two  centuries  and  our  laws  are  now 
beyond  reason. 
I  can  not  impose  upon  your  time  and  patience  by  presenting  here 
all  of  the  remarkable  deviations  from  the  "  perfection  of  reason  " 
which  characterize  our  pharmacy  laws  ;  but  in  order  to  show  you  the 
rate  of  progress  we  are  making  and  how  much  more  advanced  our 
most  recent  laws  are  than  the  older  enactments  I  shall  quote  a  few 
words  from  the  laws  passed  this  year  in  the  District  of  Columbia 
and  in  Iowa.  The  Act  of  Congress  approved  May  7,  1906,  pro- 
vides that  applicants  for  license  in  the  District  of  Columbia  "  shall 
have  had  at  least  four  years'  experience  in  the  practice  of  pharmacy 
or  shall  have  served  three  years  under  the  instruction  of  a  regular 
licensed  pharmacist,  and  any  applicant  who  has  been  graduated  from 
a  school  or  college  of  pharmacy  recognized  by  said  Board  as  in 
good  standing  shall  be  entitled  to  examination  upon  presentation  of 
his  diploma."  "  The  bearing  o'  them  observations  lays  in  the  appli- 
cation on  'em."  Not  being  endowed  with  the  legal  acumen  of  Lord 
Chancellor  Coke  or  of  our  own  esteemed  Proressor  James  H.  Beal 
I  was  unable  to  unravel  the  inner  meaning  of  that  law,  so  I  wrote  to 
the  Board  of  Supervisors  in  Medicine  and  Pharmacy  of  the  District 
of  Columbia  asking  for  an  official  interpretation.  The  answer  I 
received  was  that  all  applicants  for  license  to  practice  pharmacy  in 
the  District  must  prove  that  they  have  had  four  years'  experience, 
but  no  light  was  shed  upon  the  reference  to  graduates.  I  then 
wrote  again  asking  why  graduates  were  mentioned  at  all  since  gradu- 
ation is  not  compulsory  and  graduates  are  not  exempt  from  examin- 
ation nor  given  credit  in  any  form  for  their  technical  education.  The 
Secretary,  in  reply,  promised  to  lay  this  conundrum  before  the 
1  Portion  of  chairman's  address  on  Pharmacy  Laws  and  Boards  of  Phar- 
macy, presented  to  the  Section  on  Education  and  Legislation  of  the  American 
Pharmaceutical  Association,  September,  1906.  1 
