AmbJe°cUr'i92^arm" \  Pharmacy  and  Pre-Medical  Schools.  829 
it  is  to  exclude  those  schools  where  professional  preparation  has 
been  the  prime  purpose.  The  University  of  Pennsylvania  says  :  "Time 
spent  in  professional  schools  of  law,  dentistry,  pharmacy,  etc.,  will 
not  be  accepted  as  the  equivalent  of  any  part  of  the  two  years  of 
college  education." 
I  should  like  to  have  you  consider  with  me  for  a  little  while  this 
evening  whether  this  discrimination  against  schools  which  teach 
pharmacy  is  a  wise  one. 
REASONS  FOR  COLLEGE  EDUCATION. 
Before  undertaking  this  investigation  we  should  have  at  clear 
idea  of  why  collegiate  preparation  is  desirable  for  the  study  of  medi- 
cine.   As  I  see  it  there  are  three  fundamental  reasons. 
First. — Weeding  out  the  mentally  incompetent.  In  an  interest- 
ing article  in  the  Scientific  Monthly  (January,  1921)  Professor  Pills- 
bury,  of  the  University  of  Michigan,  points  out  that  the  modern 
educational  system  has  a  "very  important  function  as  a  selecting 
agency,  a  means  of  separating  the  men  of  best  intelligence  from  the 
deficient  and  mediocre.  All  are  poured  into  the  system  at  the 
bottom;  the  incapable  are  soon  rejected  or  drop  out  after  various 
grades  and  pass  into  the  ranks  of  unskilled  labor  .  ...  the  more 
intelligent  who  are  to  be  clerical  workers  pass  into  the  high  school; 
the  most  intelligent  enter  the  universities,  whence  they  are  selected 
for  their  professions."  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  amount  of 
education  a  man  can  acquire  is  limited  by  his  natural  endowments. 
There  are  types  of  intellect,  amply  sufficient  for  the  requirements  of 
swinging  a  pick-axe  or  shoveling  coal,  to  whom  an  asymmetric  car- 
bon atom  would  remain  a  mystery  even  after  forty  years  of  study. 
It  is  manifest  that  a  man  with  insufficient  degree  of  intelligence  to 
pursue  a  course  at  college  can  never  reach  high  success  in  the  prac- 
tice of  medicine. 
Second. — Advantage  of  a  certain  degree  of  familiarity  with 
what  are  called  ''cultural"  subjects.  A  man  may  be  able  to  cure 
malaria  without  ever  having  read  Shakespeare,  but  he  is  certainly 
limited  in  his  outlook  on  life  and,  I  believe,  in  his  usefulness  to  the 
community  unless  he  has  some  acquaintance  with  English  literature. 
