86o 
Professional  Training. 
( Am.  Jour,  Pharm. 
I      Dec,  1921. 
mitted  by  the  pupil,  and  resolved  by  the  teacher,  out  of  hand.  The 
advantage  of  a  training  in  pure  science  after  pupilage  is  over,  lies, 
therefore,  in  the  fact  that  such  a  training  is  not  a  course  of  in- 
struction at  all.  It  is  throughout  an  unbroken  process  of  educa- 
tion, full  of  pleasure  and  interest,  alike  to  teacher  and  taught.  You 
have  before  you  an  enviable  opportunity.  Benefit  by  that  oppor- 
tunity; such  another  may  never  come  your  way  again. 
Whether  at  the  close  of  such  a  course  of  training  there  be  a 
testing  examination  is  immaterial.  The  teacher  knows  that  nothing 
of  the  kind  is  required.  If,  for  purposes  of  professional  registra- 
tion, ordinance  prescribes  such  an  ordeal,  it  becomes,  for  the  pupil, 
an  incident  devoid  of  anxiety.  The  candidate  is  aware  that  what- 
ever an  examiner  may  ask  him  he  can  only  be  requested  to  evince 
knowledge  already  part  of  himself. 
FUTURE  DEVELOPMENTS. 
Should  circumstances  eventually  compel  pharmacy,  as  they 
have  compelled  medicine,  to  abandon  practical  pupilage,  it  will  be 
interesting  to  see  what  course  your  successors  adopt.  If,  when  that 
day  comes,  your  chief  work  be  to  aid  the  institutes  rather  than  the 
practice  of  medicine,  the  preliminary  discipline  in  science  which 
precedes  professional  training  proper  must  be  of  the  intensive  char- 
acter imparted  to  the  technological  assistants  of  husbandry ;  a  train- 
ing in  science  such  as  is  adequate  for  medical  or  agricultural  prac- 
tice will  not  be  sufficient.  In  imparting  the  necessary  training  phar- 
macy may,  as  regards  physics  and  chemistry,  rely,  as  agriculture 
and  medicine  do,  on  the  aid  of  academic  science.  But  so  far  as  the 
necessary  discipline  in  biology  is  concerned  pharmacy  will  do  well 
to  follow  the  example  of  gardencraft  and  impart  the  scientific  train- 
ing on  her  own  account. 
The  reason  is  obvious.  In  the  field  of  organic  study  academic 
science  finds  that,  for  purposes  of  doctrine,  facts  relating  to  the 
structure  and  functions  of  the  animal  and  the  plant  as  vital  me- 
chanisms are  more  useful  than  those  connected  with  the  natural 
history  of  living  organisms.  But  in  pharmacy,  as  in  gardencraft, 
these  truths,  valuable  and  essential  as  they  are,  constitute  only  a 
portion  of  the  knowledge  a  pupil  must  master,  and  pharmacy,  like 
gardencraft,  will  find  that  in  this  particular  field  of  study,  if  she 
wishes  the  work  to  be  done  adequately,  she  must  do  it  herself. 
