A Few Problems in the Education of a Pharmacist

This document written in 1930 by Henry C. Biddle, California College of Pharmacy, San Francisco, is part of our History Archive. It was originally published in Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association, Volume XIX, Number 11, November 1930, pp. 1238–1240. Below, it has been adapted for the web from that printed publication.

There are many problems to-day affecting the matter of pharmaceutical education. Among these, however, we desire to consider briefly only three.

1. Unequal and inadequate preparation in the high school

The majority of colleges of pharmacy now require a high school diploma as a condition of entrance. This presents, however, a certain element of uncertainty because of the varied training given many applicants in the lower school. Not infrequently the high school record offers a training so deficient in science or mathematics as seriously to handicap the student in his studies in the college. At the California College of Pharmacy students, even though graduates of a high school, have been refused admission on account of their inadequate preparation. To ameliorate this condition of affairs our western college has recommended to principals and students of high schools that the training of prospective students of pharmacy should include the following subjects:

English, three years
history, one year
mathematics (algebra and plane geometry) two or two and one-half years
chemistry, one year
physics, one year, or mathematics (including trigonometry), three years
German or French, two years
Latin, two years
biology, one year

2. The question of outside activities—half-day versus full-day devotion to study

The limitation of college work to a half-day seriously interferes with the educational development of the student. The varied arguments advanced to support the part-time program fail to recognize that the limited time does not afford sufficient opportunity for study, particularly when in certain cases the remaining half-day and part of the night may be given to clerking in a drug store. The division of interests tends to develop in the student a sponge-like attitude toward education in which he attempts to absorb the work without personal mental application. He thus fails to recognize what it really means to be a student.

To justify the division of activities during college work it has been urged that the state board requires the practical training. While we fully recognize the value of this training, attention is called to the fact that this argument is inapplicable, since credit is not ordinarily allowed by a state board for both educational work and outside practice carried on simultaneously.

The solution of the problem appears to be in following the accepted procedure of an academic college, requiring full-day devotion to the educational program.

3. The question of professional idealism—the pharmacist and his vision

Some time ago a dean in addressing a group of pharmacy students raised a question as to whether the objective before the student of pharmacy was simply the making of money. A few promptly responded in the affirmative.

One of the difficulties in pharmaceutical education has been a low level of an idealism for service. Not that anyone would decry an ambition for financial success. This is an entirely legitimate outlook. Every man is entitled to a proper recompense for his activities, and one of the duties which he owes both to society and himself is to win business success—the highest success he may honestly achieve.

Pharmaceutical education increases a man’s earning capacity, but it should present an idealism beyond this in the development of a man’s value as a citizen.

Pause for a moment to consider the problem presented. For what purpose are our activities, after all? A man may say that he is successful because he is earning money, but there is no normally balanced individual who would be willing to devote his life simply to the accumulation of wealth, if such action meant a miserly attitude toward life—simply the winning of wealth and nothing more. No, it is the zest and spirit of constructive action that drives men on. Without this the accumulation of wealth alone does not satisfy.

Several years ago in a small town near San Francisco, I was talking with a commercial traveller and in a moment of confidence he said to me, “The whole object we are working for in life after all is making money; we might as well be honest about it; that is the only end we have in view.” God pity the man with an ideal like that.

Pharmaceutical education has before it the duty of presenting the ideal of good citizenship through service.

One of the personalities which has left its stamp upon this generation was the outstanding character of Theodore Roosevelt—a man whose sheer love of achievement through service swept him on to success. A similar character in many ways, but less widely known, is Francis J. Heney, who a number of years ago successfully devoted his efforts to cleansing a bad political situation in San Francisco.

At this time Dr. Benjamin I. Wheeler, then President of the University of California, extended to Mr. Heney an invitation to address the student body.

In his inimitable way of introducing a speaker, President Wheeler presented Mr. Heney to the large audience by saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, we to-day are to have the pleasure of listening to a man who attended the University for a time but never graduated; he graduated,” added President Wheeler, “from the larger University of life’s experience.”

Then Mr. Heney stepped to the front and began to speak in a voice which is naturally a trifle harsh.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “It is a great pleasure for me to be here to-day. I once attended the University, I was fired—fired for fighting—and it is of great interest to me that I am to-day invited to address this vast assemblage because I am fighting.”

But Mr. Heney was invited to address the student body that day not simply because he was a fighter, but because he was fighting for civic righteousness in the City of San Francisco and was graduating in his activities from the larger University of life’s experience—and that after all is the achievement that counts.

Citizenship through service is particularly open to the pharmacist.

Last year a successful pharmacist in one of the smaller towns of Southern California was named by a representative newspaper as a citizen especially worthy of mention, because of the outstanding courteous service which he was rendering the community in which he lived.

Across the bay from San Francisco are the progressive cities of Alameda, Oakland and Berkeley—the last being the site of the University of California. The position of mayor in two of these cities—Alameda and Berkeley—is to-day held by a member of the profession of pharmacy and in each case the position was awarded the incumbent because of his service value to the municipality.

One of the great responsibilities, indeed, resting upon present-day pharmaceutical education is stressing the vision of professional idealism in the higher fields of service.

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