Albany College of Pharmacy - Alembic Yearbook (Albany, NY)

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Zllnrvmnrh A school or college is a complex having many parts with differing functions. There is the building in which it is housed and containing its material equipment, the board of trustees holding 'title to its property and clothed with many responsibilities, the faculty, which is charged with the work of instruction: the student body, for the sake of which the institution exists, and its alumni, for if these are organized in some way and interested in its affairs they may greatly aid its work and promote its success, and should be counted as a very material part of the institution when regarded as a whole. As with every organism, its healthfulness and efhciency will depend upon the integrity of its correlated parts. The school exists for its students, and if these are earnest, ambitious and imbued with the scholarls instinct, they are, in any of the higher or technical institutions, co-workers with their instructors, seekers after knowledge and lovers of wisdom, and not as children who are placed under guardians or driven by taskmasters. Anything, therefore, that tends to promote solidarity, a true fellowship, and real community of interests in the student body, is beneficial to its members and to the institution as a whole. And so fam very glad that the Senior Class in this school has decided to issue an f'Annual H such as is published by the students in many colleges. The action is spontaneous, and, being so, is indicative of a real interest in the life and work of the school and a desire to promote and maintain a proper class feeling and a legitimate and praiseworthy college spirit. There is a college spirit 'i which is childish in its essence and harmful, rather than helpful, in its ends and aims. If college pride or class feeling magnines that which is unimportant and ephemeral, and does not concern itself with the real work ofthe institution in some essential way, it is misdirected and unlikely to be productive of any good results. But there are many class activities which are manly and not childish, and which tend to promote a closer union between student and teacher, whose aims and interests are identical, if so be they are correctly understood. An annual like TITHE ALEBIIKIC, while issued by the class, has a semi-ofhcial status, and should promote a still closer union between the student body and the teaching staff Such closer union being from every point of view desirable in institutions like schools of pharmacy, the work of IO

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f 1 f EJ

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which is essentially practical, rather than disciplinary, preparatory or cultural, the Faculty of the Albany College of Pharmacy cordially approve this new undertaking and wish it abundant and lasting success. Amo-ng the fanciful conceits of the alchemists which have survived in our latter-day scientihc terminology was this,- that the volatile part evolved, as by heat, from material substances, was the essence or spirit of such substance. All bodies, says Bacon, Uhave spirits and pneumatical parts within them. Such terms as spirit of wine survive, and it was in retorts or alembfcs that the separation of the ethereal part was effected. The vessel is obsolete, but the name alembic 'l remains, and it has passed into literature typifying that which refines and frees the rarer and essential from the grosser and material substance. And so we think the name chosen for this publication to be suggestive of the true aim of all education, which is the separation of the higher from the lower, the exaltation of the spirit, and a rehning that is real and substantial, and not specious or delusive like an external polish, which, being superficial, merely may deceive for a time, but cannot long endure. NV. G. T. Ffa? + ll W f FH Xin, r II