^vemberfwoS1, }    Education  and  Legislation  in  Pharmacy.  533 
there  is  fair  play.  It  must  do  justice  to  both  the  public  and  the 
pharmacist.  There  are  those  who  already  question  the  wisdom  of 
turning  over  the  regulation  of  the  practice  of  pharmacy  to  the  phar- 
macists themselves.  Therefore  let  the  Board  of  Pharmacy  not 
forget  the  rights  of  the  public. 
The  only  limit  to  the  power  of  the  Boards  of  Pharmacy  to  fix  or 
define  the  qualifications  of  applicants  for  license  is  the  limit  of 
reasonableness.  The  pharmacy  law  of  Minnesota  says  nothing  about 
the  general  preliminary  education  which  should  be  required  of  appli- 
cants  for  license.  The  Board  asked  the  Attorney  General  of  the 
State  whether  it  had  the  power  to  prescribe  whatever  standard  it 
deemed  requisite,  grammar-school  graduation  or  high-school  gradu- 
ation. He  replied  that  the  Board  has  wide  discretionary  powers 
and  can  do  whatever  is  reasonable. 
The  fact  is  that  in  most  of  our  States,  as  the  laws  now  read,  the 
Board  of  Pharmacy  is  the  sole  judge  of  the  qualifications  which 
should  be  exacted  of  all  persons  to  whom  licenses  are  issued.  The 
Board  has  ample  power  to  demand  not  only  one  year's  high-school 
work  but  four  years  of  it  if  it  so  decides.  It  has  also  the  right  to 
demand  graduation  from  a  proper  school  of  pharmacy.  It  has  the 
right  to  decide  what  constitutes  a  proper  school  of  pharmacy.  It 
has  the  power  to  examine  into  the  qualifications  of  any  candidate 
whether  by  taking  stock  of  what  that  candidate  has  done  and  the 
examinations  he  has  already  passed  before  any  examiners  whose 
ability  and  honesty  are  entitled  to  confidence,  or  by  examinations 
held  by  its  own  members,  or  by  examinations  held  by  examiners  of 
its  own  selection.  It  has  the  power,  in  its  own  discretion,  to  exempt 
from  all  examinations  graduates  who  have  successfully  completed 
sufficient  courses  of  education  in  proper  pharmaceutical  schools ; 
or  to  exempt  such  graduates  from  examination  in  chemistry,  botany, 
pharmacognosy,  materia  medica,  the  theory  of  pharmacy  and  any 
other  scientific  study  adequately  covered  by  their  college  courses, 
giving  such  graduates  instead  an  examination  limited  to  the  practi- 
cal pharmacy  of  prescriptions  and  dispensing. 
The  kind  of  men  who  should  by  all  means  be  members  of  the 
Board  of  Pharmacy  must  make  the  very  best  examiners  to  test  the 
ability  of  applicants  for  license  to  read  and  understand  prescriptions, 
to  detect  errors  and  dangers  in  these,  to  compute  doses,  and  to  do 
the  actual  work  of  dispensing  in  a  workmanlike  way.  I  am  unable 
to  comprehend  why  they  should  insist  upon  doing  more. 
