Read Ebook: The Alumni Journal of the College of Pharmacy of the City of New York Vol. II No. 2 February 1895 by Various Kraemer Henry Editor

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Here is an example of a yacht picture. It is the English yacht Iris. It is a fine picture. The yacht is travelling very fast.

Here is a picture on the East River, made by Dr. Habershaw, showing the work of amateurs in this line.

I could tell you a good deal more about this subject, but there is only one other thing I would now like to mention. Some of you, I suppose, have heard a great deal about taking photographs in colors. We are very near it. They have produced in France, Germany and England pictures of the spectrum in the silver salts: that is to say, with the colors of the spectrum. They are very weak and have to be looked at in a certain light. They are the result of interference of the thin films. We are doing something more important. We are learning to make the whole spectrum. For example, we can to-day get just as good an impression upon silver salts with a red light as Scheele did with a violet light in 1774. That leads to what is called ortho-chromatic photography, that is photography that will give us every color in the spectrum. It has been found possible to make pictures in certain colors. A long time ago, the spectrum was separated into three colors, red, yellow and blue of certain kinds.

Now, if you take a picture in a red light of a certain character, and another of the same subject in a yellow light of a certain character, and another in a blue light of a certain character, you have three negatives. You can make three negatives, one of the red light, one of the yellow light and one of the blue light. Now, by taking pigments and printing in a press like a lithographic press, you can make a red positive from the red negative, and a blue positive from the blue negative and a yellow positive from the yellow negative, and in that way you may get three impressions, which is the result in the same colors. You must not stop there, however. There is a certain amount of shadow, and the result of it is that they have to what they call "over-lay," taking the three colors separately and superimposing them in printing. Remember, the red parts of the picture are taken with the red light. That is, suppose you put a red piece of glass in front of your camera, then only the red parts of the picture pass through to the sensitive plate. Then repeat the operation with the blue glass and the yellow glass, and the result will be as above.

Now I hope I have not bored you by any profuse details. I did not intend to. I only tried to interest you in one of the most important inventions of the Nineteenth Century. The steam engine, the telegraph, the telephone and the photograph are four of the grand inventions which the century has produced, and I think every intelligent person should learn something about them. I am afraid that I have had too little time to do the subject justice. You can understand how much more there is behind this superficial view. I only have to thank you for your very kind attention.

The Alumni Journal

Published under the auspices of the

Alumni Association of the College of Pharmacy

OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK,

THE ALUMNI JOURNAL will be published Monthly.

Entered at New York Post Office as second-class matter

SUBSCRIPTION:

Per Annum, One Dollar Single Copies, 15 Cents.

All copy for publication, or changes of advertisements should reach us on or before the 20th of the month previous to the issue in which they are to appear.

All matters relating to publication should be written on one side of the paper only, and sent to the editor,

HENRY KRAEMER, 115-119 West 68th Street.

All communications relating to finances and subscriptions should be addressed to

A. HENNING, Treas., 115-119 West 68th Street.

All communications relating to advertising should be addressed to

A. K. LUSK, 1 Park Row.

EDITOR,

HENRY KRAEMER, PH. G.

ASSISTANT EDITORS,

FRED. HOHENTHAL, PH. G. K. C. MAHEGIN, PH. G.

ASSOCIATE EDITORS,

CHARLES RICE, PH. D. CHARLES F. CHANDLER, PH. D., M. D., L.L.D., etc. ARTHUR H. ELLIOTT, PH. D., F. C. S. HENRY H. RUSBY, M. D. VIRGIL COBLENTZ, A. M., PH. G., PH. D.

THE ABILITY OF CONSTRUCTION.

At this stage of the world's history men of ability and even of genius in a certain sense are not rare. The result is that in all of our institutions of learning the requirements become more stringent and by the time graduation arrives we see the survival of only the very best men. We find the same classes of men throughout life that we find in college--we find men of energy and slothfulness, men devoted to pleasures and by nature politicians, men of ability of construction and men of power in criticism. While at College the training to-day is chiefly analytical and the result is that men are prone to examine everything closely and some even learn to take delight in tearing things to pieces. There are some men who are utterly ruined so far as their inward happiness and that of those about them is concerned by their critical tendencies. They do this to the detriment of their own energies and abilities of construction and hence never or but seldom build anything, but employ their days in tearing down what others have built. The critic is necessary and essential in every department of labor where human thought is allowed entrance. Criticisms that are honest always help the builder and are a gain to posterity.

It is questionable if it is desirable for the conscientious young man to encourage in his life a too critical tendency. It is not necessary to look at the bright side of the affairs of life, or even to look upon men charitably, so to speak. It is sufficient for every young man especially to look upon events of life as they are. It is decidedly important for the man of aspiration to look upon life with its duties when he has had sufficient rest and food and exercise. Wrongs may be righted and errors corrected in but two ways: the thoughtful way and the thoughtless way. The thoughtful way is always attendant of health and with a broad minded and large hearted individual. It is not our desire, however, to dwell too long upon the subject in the abstract as we are anxious to reprint the closing words of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge's Phi Beta Kappa oration delivered last June at Harvard College. He said in closing:

"How then is a university to reach the results we ought to have from its teachings in this country and this period? Some persons may reply that it can be obtained by making the university training more practical. Much has been said on the point first and last, but the theory, which is vague at best, seems to me to have no bearing here. It is not a practical education which we seek in this regard, but a liberal education. Our search now and here is not for an education which shall enable a man to earn his living with the least possible delay; but for a training which shall develop character and mind along certain lines.

"To all her students alike it is Harvard's duty to give that which will send them out from her gates able to understand and to sympathize with the life of the time. This cannot be done by rules or systems or text-books. It can come from the subtile, impalpable, and yet powerful influences which the spirit and atmosphere of the great university can exert upon those within its care. It is not easy to define or classify these influences although we all know their general effect. Nevertheless, it is, I think, possible to get at something sufficiently definite to indicate what is lacking and where the peril lies. It all turns on the spirit which inspires the entire collegiate body, on the mental attitude of the university as a whole. This brings us at once to the danger which I think confronts all our large universities to-day, and which I am sure confronts that university which I know and love best. We are given over too much to the critical spirit and we are educating men to become critics of other men instead of doers of deeds themselves.

"The time in which we live is full of questions of the deepest moment. There has been during the century just ending the greatest material development ever seen. The condition of the average man has been raised higher than before, and wealth has been piled up beyond the wildest fancy of romance. We have built up a vast social and industrial system, and have carried civilization to the highest point it has ever touched. That system and that civilization are on trial. Grave doubts and perils beset them. Everywhere to-day there is an ominous spirit of unrest. Everywhere is a feeling that all is not well, when health abounds, and none the less dire poverty ranges by its side, when the land is not fully populated and yet the number of unemployed reaches to the millions. I believe we can deal with these doubts and rents successfully, if we will but set ourselves to the great task as we have to the trials and dangers of the past. But the solution will tax to the utmost all the wisdom and courage and learning that the country can provide. What are our universities, with their liberal education to play in the history that is now making and is still to be written? They are the crown and glory of our civilization, but they can readily be set aside if they fall out of sympathy with the vast movements about them. I do not say whether they should seek to resist or to sustain or to guide and control these movements. But if they would not dry up and wither they must at least understand them.

"A great university must be in touch with the world about it, with its hopes, its passions, its troubles, and its strivings. If it is not it must be content.

'For aye to be in the shady cloister mewed, Chanting faint hymns to the cold, fruitless moon.'

"The university which pretends to give a liberal education must understand the movements about it, see whether the great forces are tending, and justify its existence by breeding men who by its teachings are more able to render the service which humanity is ever seeking."

Professor Fried. Aug. Fl?ckiger died on Dec. 11, 1894, at Berne. He was the foremost pharmacognosist and scientific pharmacist of his time. An extended account of his life and works will appear in a later issue of THE ALUMNI JOURNAL.

NEW LITERATURE.

Readers desiring any of the works contained in this list can obtain them through B. Westerman & Co., 812 Broadway, Gustav E. Stechert, 810 Broadway, or other foreign booksellers.

An examination of the constituents and particularly the better principle of Cnicus benedictus.

A comprehensive treatise on the principles and practice of preventive medicine from an American standpoint.

In these days of degenerate rivalry among educational institutions, and particularly among the different classes of technical schools, when their officers are wont to prefer the very poorest of text-books, written by one of their own number, for the best of them should it emanate from a rival institution, we have become accustomed to looking upon publications of this sort as serving merely, like an electoral vote, to count one among the general collection. It can scarcely be expected that text-books written from such standpoints and with such motives can have much permanent value, and the future educational historian will doubtless look with amazement upon the trash of this character which has been brought to light during the present era. In the midst of this wearisome train of events it is refreshing to have presented to us a new text-book, whose publication constitutes, as to its main part, a real event in the history of pharmaceutical education.

Prof. Sayre's work on Pharmacognosy has a real reason for existence in its scope, arrangement and execution. It is new and original, and will stand by itself as a prominent American text-book. If it possesses glaring and in some respects fatal defects, it at the same time presents the merit of ingenuity in construction as well as in the selection of subject matter, and it cannot fail to become a much-used reference book, not only by the pharmaceutical profession for whom it is intended but by physicians as well. It is perhaps unfortunate that so many individuals, and nearly all of them students, should have been given a free hand in the working out of the various departments, and that their products have not been in all cases perfectly harmonized by the master. It is also unfortunate that so many statements should have been taken, without investigation, from other authors. A brief scrutiny of the pages will suffice to reveal this composite origin, even if one does not read the acknowledgments of the author in his preface. Doubtless Prof. Sayre, while he has not greatly interfered with the individuality of presentation of these different subjects, has taken pains to verify the accuracy of the facts and conclusions recorded. Should such prove upon closer investigation to be the case, the defect referred to must doubtless be considered as one of style merely.

The appearance of an American work on Pharmacognosy is of so much importance that it is not inappropriate that it be analyzed with some degree of fulness. The book consists of two parts with three appendices. Part 1 is on "Pharmacal Botany," while part 2 is upon "Organic Materia Medica and Pharmacognosy." It is impossible to review this work fairly in the interest of the public as well as of the author without recording the opinion that the eighty-two pages comprising Part 1 should never have been published, if we regard either the reputation of the author or the welfare of students of pharmacy.

Our American text-books on Pharmaceutical Botany, bears no evidence that any author has yet comprehended the needs of pharmaceutical students in this direction, or has adjusted his instruction so as to accomplish the object for which it was devised. The idea invariably indicated by the writings, even if not intended by the writers, is that as the application of botanical knowledge to the practice of the pharmacy is limited, its teachings may therefore be superficial, indefinite and vague. The true idea it seems to us is, that it should be curtailed and limited only as to the portions of the field covered; but these requisite portions should be taught with a fulness of illustration, a clearness of presentation and a simplicity of style, all the more marked because the student is deprived of the enlightening effect contributed in other cases by those portions which are here necessarily omitted.

When such appears, it will be as a labor of love, by one whose regard for the subject is such as to lead him to donate his time and labor, and whose means enable him to bear the burden of a financially unsuccessful enterprise.

The part of the work under criticism is a mere series of definitions, illustrated in a highly unsuccessful manner, and frequently losing sight of the requirement that a definition must include the whole of the thing defined and nothing else. It is very naive to say: "All organic matter containing a green coloring matter called chlorophyl, belongs to the vegetable kingdom," without directly stating that no other class does, which statement would leave out the fungi, a part of the definition of which is that they contain no such matter. To define Morphology as treating--"Of the organs of plants and their relations to each other," is not to define it at all, as that would include the whole of Organography, and does not even exclude Physiology, except by virtue of the author's preceding clause. Systematic botany, defined as "That division which treats of the arrangement and classification of plants," does not suggest the vital characteristics of that subject. It would be more philosophical to refer to the distinctive characteristics of Phanerogams as the manner in which the embryo is produced within a true seed, than to intimate that the embryo is entirely foreign to cryptogamic reproduction. These definitions, taken from less than two pages of matter, indicate to our mind a lack of the expenditure of time requisite to bring forth a set of new definitions more perfectly in accord with the fullest knowledge of to-day than any list which has yet appeared; and yet when the instruction given in a new text-book is chiefly limited to definitions, that is the very least that should have been attempted.

Some of the morphological definitions are actually at variance with accurate descriptive usage, as that of primary and secondary roots, duration, etc. To call a stem an "axis" and a root an "axis" of a different kind, is to perpetuate a term at the expense of all regard for that accuracy which is the most important element of scientific language. Such subjects as venation are of prime importance to the pharmacist, and so far from restricting the teachings to several of the more important terms presented in ordinary text-books on botany, the classification should be elaborated in its fullest details. Compare the definition of classes, as "Plants resembling one another in some grand leading feature," and of orders or families, as "Plants that very closely resemble each other in some leading particular," with the clear presentation of ranks in class characteristics, given by Agassiz a generation ago, and which should, if anything, have been improved upon in the light of modern knowledge and perfected usage.

The subject of nomenclature, the recent agitation of which has done more to expose and shatter erroneous practices in scientific thought and custom than any other influence, and whose correct apprehension is the very corner-stone of pharmacopoeial definition, we do not see anywhere treated.

Appendix "A" is a valuable contribution on the subject of insects injurious to drugs.

Appendix "B" is no less important, it being an account of the contributions of organic chemistry to materia medica.

Appendix "C" treats of "Pharmacal Microscopy" in such a fragmentary and superficial way that it will scarcely be found of service to any one in these days.

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