AmDl™ri92Larm  \  Professional  Training.  847 
THE  ORIGIN  OF  GARDEN  CRAFT  AND  PHARMACY. 
The  student  of  pharmacy  often  has  occasion  to  appeal  to  un- 
written history.  He  realises  that  her  evidence,  if  harder  to  decipher, 
is  more  reliable  than  the  written  word.  Unwritten  history  assures 
us  that  the  earliest  preoccupation  of  primitive  man  was  as  to  what 
he  might  eat  and  wear.  When  these  needs  were  first  felt,  man 
relied  on  wild  Nature  to  supply  them.  As  wild  supplies  became  in- 
adequate, a  rudimentary  husbandry  had  to  be  devised.  This  took 
the  form  of  gardening;  the  hoe  and  spade  antedate  the  plough. 
Modern  refinement  in  husbandry  is  accidental ;  the  original  purpose 
of  the  cultivation  of  food  and  fibre-plants  was  to  remedy  defeats  and 
errors  in  diet  and  dress. 
Horticulture  has,  then,  some  reason  when  it  claims  to  have 
been  founded  by  the  first  canonical  patriarch.  You  may  admit  that 
claim  without  conceding  that  gardencraft  is  an  older  calling  than 
pharmacy.  The  wants  that  led  to  the  evolution  of  tillage  induced 
more  than  discomfort ;  early  man  developed  disease  before  he  began 
to  dig.  The  help  of  pharmacy  may  have  been  a  secondary  neces- 
sity ;  steps  to  meet  that  need  were  taken  first.  Though  pharmacy 
and  gardencraft  originated  at  opposite  poles  in  one  primitive  field  of 
purpose,  both  callings  are  the  immediate  outcome  of  the  same  early 
solicitude. 
STUDIES  AND  CURRICULA. 
A  School  like  this  is  not  made  by  the  building  which  houses 
it,  but  by  the  training  it  imparts.  It  is  therefore  natural  if  your 
thoughts,  on  the  opening  day  of  a  new  session,  turn  to  the  studies 
before  you. 
This  is  one  of  the  subjects  regarding  which  I  cannot  speak  from 
experience.  That  is  an  advantage.  Instead  of  being  left  to  form 
erroneous  impressions,  I  am  able  to  turn  for  authoritative  informa- 
tion to  the  brilliant  Inaugural  Address  delivered  by  the  President 
of  the  Society  five  years  ago.  Regarding  pharmaceutical  training 
as  a  whole,  your  predecessors  were  then  reminded  that  schemes  for 
compulsory  curricula  in  pharmacy  have  been  proposed  at  different 
times.  Provision  has  been  made  in  them  for  an  irksome  prelim- 
inary assessment  of  the  knowledge  you  may  have  gained  at  school, 
and  a  fateful  final  scrutiny  of  the  results  of  your  professional  train- 
