THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY 
FEBRUARY,  1895. 
FRIEDRICH  AUGUST  FLUCKIGER.— ■ 
By  Fr.  Hoffmann. 
As  the  scope  of  each  of  the  auxiliary  sciences  of  pharmacy  has 
constantly  expanded,  the  faculties  and  the  life  of  an  individual  man 
are  no  longer  sufficient  to  grasp  the  whole  domain,  or  even  the 
ramifications  of  either  of  such  sciences  as  chemistry,  physics  and 
botany.  Division  of  labor  in  every  direction,  therefore,  has  more 
and  more  taken  place  in  the  study  and  pursuit  of  these  sciences. 
The  universalist,  possible  a  generation  ago,  has  largely  been  reduced 
to  the  specialist  among  the  professors  and  students  of  our  days. 
The  master  minds  in  pharmacy,  conversant  with  the  theory  and 
practice  of  the  various  branches  of  the  pertinent  sciences,  and 
acting  with  equal  proficiency  in  more  than  one,  as  teachers,  investi- 
gators and  authors,  therefore,  are  also  passing  away,  and  are 
replaced  by  the  specialist.  One  of  the  few  of  these  generic  stars 
in  the  domain  of  the  sciences  pertaining  to  pharmacy  of  the  depart- 
ing century  was  Professor  Fliickiger,  who  passed  away  at  his  home 
in  Switzerland,  on  December  11,  J  894. 
Friedrich  August  Fliickiger  was  born  on  May  15,  1828,  at  the  vil- 
lage of  Langenthal,  near  Bern,  Switzerland.  His  father  was  a  small 
merchant,  and  the  boy  was  educated  at  the  village  school,  with  a 
view  to  pursuing  a  mercantile  trade.  At  the  age  of  seventeen  years 
he  entered  a  commercial  institute  in  Berlin,  but  his  inclination 
towards  the  natural  sciences  seems  to  have  been  nursed  and  to  have 
found  encouragement  in  Berlin,  for  he  soon  relinquished  the  course 
of  the  commercial  college  in  order  to  attend  lectures  in  chemistry, 
geology  and  botany  at  the  University  of  Berlin.  In  1847,  he  entered 
(65) 
