^vembef^iloS1'}    Education  and  Legislation  in  Pharmacy.  537 
wretchedly  poor  that  their  career  is  almost  certainly  foredoomed  to 
failure  ?    No.    Let  us  repent  and  reform. 
We  are  told  that  a  large  number  of  graduates  coming  from  prac- 
tically all  the  schools  of  pharmacy  are  unable  to  pass  the  Board 
examinations.  The  Boards  blame  the  schools  and  the  schools  blame 
the  Boards.  Perhaps  they  are  both  to  blame.  Let  them  get 
together  and  find  out  what  the  trouble  is. 
This  great  Association  should  be  the  neutral  ground  where  the 
Boards  and  schools  can  be  brought  into  friendly  and  proper  rela- 
tions.   They  can  each  teach  the  other  some  valuable  lessons. 
And,  above  all,  let  us  now  and  here  begin  to  construct  an  orderly, 
sane,  respectable,  workable  system  of  dealing  with  the  regulation  of 
the  practice  of  pharmacy,  the  promotion  of  decent  pharmaceutical 
education,  the  preservation  of  the  professional  honor  of  our  craft, 
and  the  prosperity  of  all  of  our  worthy  craftsmen. 
Reasonableness. — No  laws  are  ideal.  They  are  made  up  of  con- 
ventions and  compromises.  This  is  not  only  proper  but  unavoid- 
able. 
The  pharmacy  laws  and  the  rules  of  the  Boards  must  all  be  com- 
promises.   But  several  grades  of  compromises  are  possible. 
The  standards  we  should  set  up  for  ourselves  as  entirely  prac- 
ticable and  attainable  within  ten  or  twenty  years  must  include  high- 
school  graduation  and  a  solid  two  years'  course  in  a  good  school  of 
pharmacy. 
The  irreducible  minimum  requirements  which  may  very  well  be 
put  into  practice  at  once  are  one  year's  high-school  work  and  a  col- 
lege course  of  fifty-two  weeks  divided  between  two  years. 
The  best  plan  would,  therefore,  seem  to  be  one  that  recognizes 
these  limitations,  but  which  is  elastic  enough  to  encourage  the  higher 
standards  while  permitting  the  lower  ones. 
High-school  graduates  should  be  enabled  to  complete  all  quali- 
fications for  license  as  Registered  Pharmacists  in  five  years  after 
their  graduation  from  high  school,  and  that  period  of  five  years 
should  for  the  present  include  either  three  years  of  drug-store 
experience  and  two  years  in  a  pharmaceutical  school,  or  four  years' 
drug-store  experience  and  one  year  in  a  school  of  pharmacy,  at  their 
option. 
A  young  man  who  graduates  from  high  school  at  eighteen  could 
thus  become  a  Registered  Pharmacist  at  twenty-three. 
