EDITORIAL. 
187 
to  practice  daily,  and  an  outline  of  the  manner  of  giving  instruction  in  each 
of  the  two  branches  to  be  taught.  Some  such  outline  of  the  main  features 
of  the  tuition  to  be  given  should  be  prescribed  by  the  Constitution  of  the 
School,  leaving  the  lesser  details  to  the  Professors  -who  may  be  appointed 
o  carry  them  out. 
The  question  will  then  come  up,  whether  this  instruction  is  intended  to 
perfect  students  who  may  be  in  shops  unfavorable  for  gaining  a  practical 
experience,  or  whether  it  is  to  be  a  substitute  for  the  shop?  "We  hope  not 
the  latter.  While  the  curriculum  should  involve  an  examination  in  the 
rudiments  of  Pharmacy,  and  where  these  have  been  but  imperfectly  at- 
tained it  should  insist  on  their  acquirement,  yet  the  main  and  true  object 
of  the  School  should  be  to  give  perfect  lessons  in  pharmaceutical  manipu- 
lation with  the  best  forms  of  apparatus,  and  to  afford  the  student  full  op- 
portunities to  become  skilful  in  their  uses  and  applications,  especially  of 
those  which  the  tendency  of  latter  years  has  nearly  banished  from  the  shop. 
For  instance,  the  important  processes  of  solution,  evaporation,  and 
distillation,  and  their  use  in  making  tinctures,  syrups,  fluid  extracts  and 
extracts,  distilled  waters  and  oils,  and  which  should  involve  a  large 
portion  of  the  attention  of  the  apothecary  in  his  laboratory  and  shop,  when 
not  engaged  in  dispensing.  Then  will  come  furnace  operations,  the  purifi- 
cation and  crystallization  of  salts,  the  preparation  of  cerates,  ointments, 
and  plasters.  When  these  laboratory  operations  have  been  practically 
studied,  the  course  should  include  exercises  in  all  those  numerous  details  in- 
volved i  n  dispensing,  and  called  extemporaneous  pharmacy, — as  pill  making, 
plaster  spreading,  the  preparation  of  suppositories,  emulsions,  mixtures, 
capsules  and  granules,  pill  coating,  etc.  The  exercises  in  these  might 
begin  before  the  laboratory  course  was  completed,  as  an  alternative  on 
a  certain  day  or  days  of  the  weekly  programme,  so  as  to  carry  on  both  to- 
gether. The  course  might  appropriately  terminate  with  a  well  arranged 
exercise  in  dispensing  prescriptions,  which  should  be  chosen  to  include  some 
of  the  most  difficult  and  perplexing  examples  of  this  responsible  engage- 
ment, which  occur  in  the  daily  routine  of  a  well  established  shop. 
The  course  on  Practical  Chemistry  will  be  the  most  elaborate  and  the 
most  expensive,  both  as  regards  time  and  material.  It  naturally  divides 
itself  into  two  parts :  Preparative  Chemistry  and  Analysis.  It  is  to  be 
presumed  that  every  student  who  enters  on  this  course  will  have  had  some 
knowledge  of  the  elements  of  Chemistry,  either  by  home  study  of  books, 
or  from  lectures,  for,  whilst  each  student  would  have  his  own  practical 
orbit  to  revolve  in,  and  in  which  he  would  have  the  personal  instruction  of 
his  teacher,  yet,  without  preliminary  preparation,  it  would  be  difficult  to 
carry  on  a  class  so  that  such  beginners  could  avail  themselves  of  the  gene- 
ral remarks  of  the  Professors  on  those  occasions  set  apart  for  comment  on 
processes  involving  important  principles  of  chemical  philosophy. 
It  is  true  that  the  lectures  of  the  College,  progressing  at  the  same  time 
would  meet  this  difficulty  in  regard  to  beginners  at  the  winter  course ,  ye 
