THE 
AMERICAN  JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY. 
MAKCH,  1871. 
CAN  PRACTICAL  PHARMACY  BE  TAUGHT  EFFECTIVELY  BY 
LECTURES? 
By  William  Procter,  Jr. 
The  time  has  arrived  when  a  definite  answer  to  this  question  is  of 
serious  importance  to  the  Pharmaceutical  Institutions  of  the  United 
States.  Slowly  the  public  mind  is  being  educated  to  the  necessity  of 
the  pharmaceutical  Diploma.  One  State  after  another  is  passing  laws 
compelling  qualification,  placing  impediments  in  the  path  of  incom- 
petence, and  preparing  the  way  for  the  final  triumph  of  the  educated 
pharmaceutist.  The  sparsity  of  Schools  of  Pharmacy  offers  a  great 
obstacle  to  the  universal  extension  of  college  education  to  apotheca- 
ries, and  renders  it  doubly  important  that  those  who  make  the  sacri- 
fice to  come  long  distances  to  attend  lectures,  and  graduate,  should 
be  enabled  to  return  freighted  not  only  with  stores  of  standard  know- 
ledge of  the  books,  and  the  most  expert  practice  of  the  shop,  but  with 
the  latest  ideas  of  the  Journals  not  yet  crystallized  by  pharmaco- 
poeial  adoption.  In  this  wise  the  graduate  should  become  a  true  mis- 
sionary in  propagating  the  valuable  and  the  elegant  in  pharmacy  in 
his  practice,  by  attracting  the  attention  of  physicians  and  the  pub- 
lic to  the  contrast  which  his  dispensing  makes  with  pre-existing  im- 
perfection in  the  neighborhood  where  he  may  establish. 
All  will  agree  that  no  amount  of  tuition  by  lectures  will  be  equiva- 
lent to  that  which  the  earnest  student  receives  in  the  dispensing  shop 
and  practical  laboratory,  under  the  personal  instruction  of  a  well- 
qualified  pharmaceutist,  who  takes  an  interest  in  his  pupil ;  yet  such 
opportunities  are  rare. 
But  the  question  to  be  met  is  in  regard  to  the  efficiency  of  oral 
teaching,  where  the  teacher  addresses  himself  to  a  roomful  of  hearers, 
