532        Education  and  Legislation  in  Pharmacy.  {^Vemb^woa0, 
minded,  public-spirited  men  who  take  a  pride  in  their  profession  and 
who  will  conscientiously  study  their  duties  and  perform  them  faith- 
fully without  fear  or  favor. 
It  affords  me  great  satisfaction  to  be  able  to  believe  that  a  great 
majority  of  the  members  of  the  Boards  of  Pharmacy  are  competent, 
broad-minded,  public-spirited,  conscientious  men.  But  they  are  not 
all  of  that  stamp.  In  our  day  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry  are  unafraid 
to  undertake  anything  and  everything  without  the  slightest  special 
fitness  or  preparation  and  other  people  are  generally  too  timid  or 
too  fond  of  their  own  comfort  and  peace  of  mind  to  speak  out 
against  flagrant  abuses.  I  must  confess  that  I  am  far  from  pleased 
to  condemn  our  system,  but  I  cannot  afford  to  do  otherwise. 
Plain  common  sense  would  admonish  us  that  no  man  should 
undertake  to  be  a  teacher  who  has  never  been  a  real  student  himself. 
No  man  should  accept  the  post  of  examiner  and  then  hold  exami- 
nations which  he  himself  can  not  pass.  No  man  should  accept  any 
public  office  the  duties  of  which  he  is  unable  or  unwilling  to  mas- 
ter/. Yet  we  do  have  some  members  of  Boards  of  Pharmacy  who 
are  unfitted  for  their  posts. 
The  great  majority  of  pharmacists,  including  the  Board  members 
themselves,  have  probably  never  fully  realized  the  importance  of  the 
Boards  of  Pharmacy  and  the  real  dignity  and  magnitude  of  their 
functions  when  properly  understood  and  fully  performed.  The 
duties  of  Board  members  are  not  light  unless  performed  in  a  merely 
perfunctory  way. 
The  Powers  of  Boards  of  Pharmacy  are  as  a  general  rule  most 
ample.  It  would  be  perfectly  safe  for  the  Boards  to  do  all  that  can 
reasonably  be  expected  of  them  to  exact  higher  educational 
standards. 
There  are  usually  two  extremes  possible  in  any  course  of  action. 
In  the  enforcement  of  the  pharmacy  laws  one  extreme  is  to  place 
the  standards  of  qualifications  for  license  too  high  so  that  the  phar- 
macists can  not  comply  with  them  without  paying  a  price  altogether 
out  of  proportion  to  the  value  received  ;  the  other  extreme  consists 
in  making  the  educational  requirements  for  license  so  low  that  the 
public  receives  nothing  in  return  for  the  exclusive  privileges  it  gives 
the  pharmacist.  Between  these  extremes  lies  a  navigable  channel 
called  reasonableness. 
The  Board  of  Pharmacy  is  the  umpire  which  must  see  to  it  that 
