Educational  Development . 
<  Am.  Jour.  Phaim. 
I       April.  1895. 
education  in  America,  there  arose  indications  which  seemed  to  show 
that  some  of  its  friends  believed  that  it  had  reached  the  acme  of  its 
development  and  influence.  But  fortunately  in  this  crisis,  the 
majority  of  those  in  control  clearly  grasped  the  possibilities  of  the 
future,  realized  that  there  could  be  no  such  thing  as  resting 
upon  the  record  of  the  past,  but  that  more  labor  and  greater  achieve- 
ments must  be  the  order  of  the  day,  and  a  backward  step  was  not 
to  be  thought  of.  If  this  brief  review  of  the  past  is  correctly  por-. 
trayed,  it  must  be  apparent  to  all  that  the  same  conditions  prevail 
now,  with  the  exception  that  they  are  at  present  greatly  magnified. 
The  colleges  of  pharmacy  throughout  the  United  States  were 
founded  and  have  been  successfully  developed  with  mainly  one 
object  in  view,  i.  e.,  the  fitting  of  the  younger  members  of  the  pro- 
fession for  their  duties  as  practical  pharmacists,  and  this  must 
always  continue  to.  be  the  first  consideration  ;  but  the  standard  of 
the  qualifications  of  the  practical  pharmacist  will  probably  always 
remain  to  be  a  subject  which  admits  of  diversity  of  opinion.  There 
are  those  who  hold  that  the  graduate  should  be  an  accomplished 
chemist,  an  expert  botanist,  well  grounded  in  mathematics  and  the 
languages,  and  that  too  much  education  is  beyond  the  reach  of 
possibility  ;  on  the  other  side,  there  are  those  who  maintain  that 
such  accomplishments  unfit  the  graduate  for  properly  performing 
his  routine  of  duties — indeed,  some  going  so  far  as  to  say  that  one 
so  highly  educated  is  placed  upon  a  plane  far  beyond  the  needs  of 
his  position,  and  is,  in  fact,  made  dissatisfied  with  his  lot  as  a  prac- 
tical pharmacist,  and  thus  such  knowledge  literally  educates  a  man 
out  of  the  business,  such  a  scholar  is  useless  behind  the  dispensing 
counter. 
Between  these  extreme  views  lies  the  truth.  The  education 
which,  ten  years  ago,  would  have  been  considered  ample  to  fit  the 
pharmacist  perfectly  for  his  daily  work  is  totally  inadequate  for  the 
demands  of  to-day ;  for,  as  that  most  pungent  writer  of  his  time, 
Carlyle,  puts  it :  "  The  goal  of  yesterday  is  but  the  starting-point  of 
to-morrow."  One  has  but  to  consider  the  enormous  additions  to 
our  materia  medica,  the  flood  of  synthetic  remedies  which  must  be 
intelligently  dispensed,  and  the  practice  of  the  modern,  but  much 
abused,  elegant  pharmacy. 
It  is  easy  to  fix  a  standard,  and  a  college  catalogue  may  teem, 
with  requirements  which,  upon  paper,  seem  very  alluring  to  the. 
