ADecimberPSm"}      Chairman  s  Address  on  Education.  575 
efficient  from  the  less  efficient  institutions.  I  refer  to  the  Conference 
of  Pharmaceutical  Faculties.  After  several  years  of  discussion  and 
preparation,  this  body  formulated  definite  membership  requirements 
last  year.  Hereafter  it  will  be  necessary  for  every  college  which 
desires  admission  into  the  Conference  to  have  been  in  existence  con- 
tinuously for  five  years,  to  have  a  grammar  school  entrance  standard, 
to  require  of  each  student  for  graduation  not  less  than  500  hours  of 
lecture  and  600  hours  of  laboratory  work,  and  to  give  a  total  course 
of  instruction  covering  a  period  of  at  least  forty  weeks. 
These  membership  requirements  are  not  severe ;  many  zealots 
think  they  are  discouragingly  low  and  unsatisfactory ;  but  we  must 
creep  before  we  can  walk,  and  we  should  realize  that  the  only  reform 
which  ever  proves  permanent  is  that  which  reckons  with  human 
nature  and  human  progress  as  they  exist  at  the  moment,  and  which 
goes  neither  so  fast  nor  so  far  that  it  is  denied  hearty  support  and 
encouragement.  The  Conference  has  made  a  beginning — this  is  the 
important  point.  It  has  entered  the  wedge,  and  strong  arms  will  not 
be  lacking  to  drive  it  farther  and  farther  home  as  the  knots  and  the 
knarls  gradually  give  way. 
In  the  meantime  let  us  realize  that  the  membership  standards  of 
the  Conference,  while  not  so  high  as  some  of  us  in  our  zeal  would 
have  them,  are  yet  severe  enough  to  shut  out  many  of  the  pharma- 
ceutical schools  of  the  country.  Already,  then,  the  Conference  has 
begun  the  work  of  discrimination  between  institutions,  and  we  have 
an  inkling  of  how  valuable  this  work  will  be  when  we  recall,  what 
has  already  been  stated  in  this  address,  that  the  Pennsylvania  Board 
of  Pharmacy  has  accepted  the  list  of  twenty-one  schools  comprised 
in  the  membership  of  the  Conference  as  the  colleges  whose  gradu- 
ates will  be  given  recognition  under  the  operation  of  the  newly 
enacted  prerequisite  law  of  the  State.  That  the  standards  of  the 
Conference — those  now  established  as  well  as  those  to  be  established 
in  the  future — will  become  here  and  there  the  standards  of  one  State 
board  and  another,  is  certain  ;  and  thus  the  work  of  this  body  is 
seen  to  be  pregnant  with  usefulness  and  possibility,  and  not  to  be 
merely  deliberative  and  academic  in  character  as  it  has  necessarily 
been  during  the  first  few  years  of  preparation. 
Returning  now  to  the  subject  of  graduation  prerequisite  enact- 
ments, it  is  of  course  clear  that  the  fundamental  purpose  of  such 
legislation  is  to  demand  a  greater  degree  of  fitness  from  the  prac- 
