ANoVJembef,hiam'}      Needs  of  the  Business  Pharmacist.  531 
of  the  State  association  meetings  that  the  American  Pharmaceutical 
Association  was  in  danger  of  dying  of  dry  rot,  I  do  think  that  to 
some  degree  we  have,  as  it  were,  reached  a  "  parting  of  the  ways," 
where  it  becomes  necessary  for  us  to  pause  for  the  purpose  of  deter- 
mining whether  this  association  shall  represent  only  the  purely 
scientific  side  of  pharmacy  and  rest  content  with  a  small  member- 
ship, or  whether  it  be  not  possible  to  combine  our  scientific  work 
with  the  commercial  applications  thereof,  so  as  to  secure  recognition 
from  the  great  mass  of  business  pharmacists. 
A  WEAK  SPOT  SOMEWHERE. 
We  cannot  look  back  over  the  past  record  of  this  association  and 
of  this  section  in  particular  without  a  feeling  of  pride  in  its  achieve- 
ments for  the  advancement  of  the  scientific  side  of  pharmacy.  But, 
while  taking  pride  in  its  scientific  achievements,  we  must  not  lose 
sight  of  the  fact  that  science  is  of  value  to  the  pharmacist  only  so 
far  as  he  can  make  practical  application  of  it.  In  other  words,  we 
must  not  forget  that  pharmacy  is  not  in  any  sense  a  pure  science. 
It  is  not  confined  merely  to  knowledge  of  chemical  and  botanical 
substances.  It  includes  the  practical  applications  of  nearly  all 
chemical  and  vegetable  substances  to  medicine  and  to  the  arts.  It 
should  be  one  of  the  greatest  of  applied  sciences,  and  the  pharma- 
cist should  occupy  as  high  a  position  as  the  physician  or  the  chemist. 
The  fact  that  he  does  not  shows  that  somewhere  in  our  organization 
there  is  a  weak  spot.  In  older  countries  this  lack  of  recognition 
was  attributed  to  the  fact  that  universities  did  not  recognize  phar- 
macy as  worthy  of  inclusion  in  their. course  of  study,  but  this  reason 
fails  us  when  we  consider  the  numerous  departments  of  pharmacy 
attached  to  our  own  universities. 
The  appeal  has  frequently  been  made  for  more  investigations  by 
pharmacists  in  pure  science.  That  appeal  has  not  been  disregarded. 
Indeed,  the  tendency  of  pharmaceutical  investigations  of  late  years 
has  been  more  and  more  in  that  direction,  and  to  some  extent  this 
is  responsible  for  the  lack  of  interest  displayed  by  the  rank  and  file 
of  pharmacists.  Not  that  I  wish  for  a  moment  to  disparage  such 
work  ;  investigations  in  pure  science  are  a  necessary  part  of  the 
work  of  this  section.  But  side  by  side  with  investigations  in  pure 
science  we  need  to  give  more  attention  to  the  problems  confronting 
the  practical  pharmacist  which  require  for  their  solution  the  aid  of 
