830  Pharmacy  and  Pre-Medical  Schools,   j Ami/e°curi^arm- 
It  is  highly  improbable  that  he  who  has  never  read  any  of  the  stand- 
ard masterpieces  will  ever  develop  a  good  literary  style  either  in 
speaking  or  writing.  When  I  say  "good  literary  style"  I  mean  the 
power  of  expressing  himself  so  as  to  convey  his  meaning  clearly 
and  forcibly,  not  merely  to  charm  the  ear.  If  a  man  be  ignorant  of 
history  he  cannot  properly  interpret  modern  trends  either  in  his  pro- 
fession or  in  the  world  in  general  and  there  is  certainly  a  crying  need 
in  the  medical  profession  today  for  men  whose  feet  are  held  to  the 
ground  by  a  knowledge  of  the  fads  of  the  past.  But  I  am  not  here 
to  argue  for  the  value  of  general  culture  as  a  professional  asset;  I 
can  only  say  that,  like  the  great  majority  of  professional  educators,  I! 
am  firmly  convinced  of  it. 
Third. — The  third,  and  probably  most  important  reason  for  the 
pre-medical  course  is  to  provide  a  knowledge  of  certain  branches 
which  are  fundamenal  to  the  medical  sciences. 
COMPARATIVE  ADVANTAGES  OF  SCHOOLS  OF  ARTS  OR  OF  PHARMACY. 
Let  us*  consider  the  advantages  of,  the  present  pharmacy  course 
as  a  preliminary  for  the  medical  course  under  these  three  divisions. 
First  as  a  mode  of  selection  of  the  mentally  fit.  The  value  of 
the  present  pharmacy  course  as  a  means  of  separating  men  into 
their  intellectual  or  psychological  groups  seems  to  me  at  least  equally 
high,  if  not  higher,  than  that  of  the  ordinary  college  curriculum.  The 
subject  of  materia  medica  is  as  good  a  test  of  a  man's  memory  power 
as  that  of  history.  Organic  chemistry  requires  a  degree  of  logical 
reasoning  of  as  high  a  type  as  that  in  trigonometry  or  calculus.  The 
man's  powers  of  observation,  as  well  as  his  control  over  finer  muscle 
movements,  are  fully  tested  in  the  chemical  and  pharmaceutical  la- 
boratories. I  might  digress  a  moment  to  point  out  that  motor  control, 
i.  e.,  the  power  to  guide  accurately  the  finer  movements  of  the  hands, 
is  regarded  by  psychologists  as  an  important  test  of  intellectual  ca- 
pacity and  is  an  essential  quality  both  to  the  student  and  practitioner 
of  medicine.  The  success  of  the  medical  student  in  anatomy,  physiol- 
ogy, pharmacology  and  chemistry  is  very  largely  conditioned  on  his 
ability  to  perform  delicate  manipulations. 
The  second  advantage  of  a  pre-medical  college  training  is  a  widen- 
ing of  the  mental  horizon  that  comes  only  from  knowing  something 
of  matters  beyond  the  realm  of  our  daily  occupations.  The  rela- 
tive value  of  various  studies  for  this  purpose  is  a  matter  of  per- 
