8  Side-Talk  with  the  "  Freshmen^  { 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
Jan.  2. 1871. 
their  engagements,  to  these  we  would  offer  a  word  of  encouragement 
and  advice,  based  on  personal  experience. 
The  situation  of  a  boy  just  entered  on  duty  at  a  dispensing  store 
is  not  to  be  envied.  The  calls  for  his  service  are  numerous  and  fre- 
quently beyond  his  appreciation,  so  as  to  make  him  feel  that  he  is  as 
yet  almost  powerless  to  perform  his  duties  from  his  ignorance  of  the 
material  with  which  he  has  to  deal.  Besides  the  mechanical  opera- 
tions, which  require  dexterity  and  nimbleness,  and  which  at  first 
are  performed  with  a  bungling  slowness,  he  is  constantly  at  fault  in 
finding  the  locality  of  drugs,  when  called  by  name,  or  the  implements 
required  by  a  dispenser  on  whom  he  is  waiting.  This  epoch  soon 
passes,  as  with  even  mediocre  perception  he  should  soon  acquire  suffi- 
cient knowledge  to  render  useful  aid  in  many  ways.  The  rapidity  of 
his  advancement,  next  to  his  natural  ability  to  learn,  is  much  influ- 
enced by  the  character  of  the  dispenser  with  whom  he  is  associated, 
and  to  whom  mainly  he  is  to  owe  the  lessons  and  instruction  he  is  to 
receive.  His  duties,  besides  the  cruder  ones  of  opening,  sweeping 
and  dusting  the  shop,  making  fires,  etc.,  embrace,  in  a  thorough  estab- 
lishment, the  use  of  the  contusing  mortar  and  pestle  and  the  hand- 
mill  in  preparing  drugs  for  percolation  and  infusion,  the  washing  of 
mortars  and  graduated  measures,  the  cleansing  of  spatulas  and  other 
implements  used  for  ointments,  the  washing  of  new  and  old  bottles, 
the  replacing  of  bottles,  etc.,  used  at  the  counter,  cutting  labels, 
making  paste,  filling  shop  bottles  and  drawers  from  the  storehouse  and 
the  cellar,  the  filling,  corking,  sealing  and  labelling  of  bottles  of 
liquid  and  other  preparations,  wrapping  packages  and  folding  pow- 
ders, making  and  using  filters,  the  management  of  gas  heat  in  making 
syrups,  infusions,  plasters,  etc.,  and  in  conducting  evaporation  and 
distillation,  the  stirring  of  liquids  for  extracts,  the  making  of  pill 
masses  and  the  rolling  of  pills,  garbling  and  cutting  drugs,  and  many 
other  engagements,  too  numerous  to  mention  here.  Not  one  of  these 
but  may  be  well  or  ill  taught,  and  carefully  or  slovenly  learned.  The 
old  quotation,  ''as  the  twig  is  bent  the  tree's  inclined,"  applies  forci- 
bly to  this  period,  and  he  is  a  fortunate  youth  who  falls  under  the 
guidance  of  an  earnest  and  sensible  instructor,  whose  patience  is 
equal  to  the  task  of  bearing  with  the  aberrations  of  the  beginner. 
The  object  of  this  appeal  to  the  young  minds  in  pharmacy  is  to  urge 
on  them  the  great  value  to  them  in  after  years  of  a  thorough  mastery 
of  these  preliminary  rudimental  details,  in  which  too  frequently  they 
