Columbia University College of Pharmacy - Apothekan Yearbook (New York, NY)

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Professor Pokorny, the dapper young educator with an office sit- uated on the fourth floor, was assigned the impossible task of teaching us botany. It was only natural that we picked up a little about the bee and bird activities on the side. The expedition to nearby Central Park revealed the wealth of beauty which abounded amiast steel and concrete. Banjoeyes kept us happy with his clever blackboard illustrations, one of the best of which was the Story of the Insectivorous Plant. The Pro- fessor woul d start off by drawing the unsuspecting insect climbing into the flov.er; then the insect would be portrayed as intoxicated, and thus would fint-lly find himself unable to stagger hone to his wife and seven larvae, entrapped by hi6 o.vn impulsive folly. Ah, what a touching moral to be derived froa this instance of insect versus jlant. The laboratory work in Botany was fairly simple j one look through the microscope, one look at an illustration in the textbook, and one look at what somebody else was sketching, were all that was necessary before a group of three could turn out satisfactory drawings. Zoology lab q ' lickly replaced botany, md proved to be nn equally suitable pl ce for lab oratory. H. Randolph Halsey, the director of the butcher shop, used « different pipe for every day in the semester, a nd his fondness for the cultivated week was evidenced by a throat-clearing roar after every fourth sentence of a 1-cture. His non-committal basso profundo uh-huh, with emphasis on the second syllable, was the char- acteristic response to a student ' s complaints or observations. Tte soon accustomed ourselves to the instructor ' s quaint peculiarities, and also to the gory lab work. After mangling a frog, and then a lobster, we got to the point where it became a perfectly naturel custom to devour lunch without gastric mishap while dissecting an oversized pickled cockroach. Say, do you know Sam? Tihy, he was one of the best chem teachers we ever had mo.de the acquaintance of. Still, as a means of maintaining chemical pence, equipment waa •tewed away in lookers as soon ;s Sam ap- peared within a twenty -foot radius, and mass emigration to the balance- room or the hood began instantaneously. Stragglers ruickly emptied all test tubes, turned off all Bunsens, and started washing even the clean- est equipment. But don ' t get the wrong impression. He thought fondly of Professor Lib erman, even though just one studied look from him did make us slash our wrists tdth b broken beaker. He merely endeavored to avoid the inevitable question: Do you know Tfftp.t you ' re doing? the answer to which would have caused a rapid depopulation of the realm of chemistry. It is probable, to say the least, that the master wouldn ' t have approv- ed our side experiments, such as the manufacture of synthetic meatballs from ferric hydroxide, or the technique of vaporizing solutions to dry- ness in a Gooch crucible. Sam never did get over his feeling of impend- ing danger after one wit put nine drops each of hydrochloric, sulfuric, and nitric acids on a crucible cover, heated it to 350° Centigrade, and then waved the fuming liquid overhead in the laboratory to imitate sky- writing. As if he didn ' t care pny more about living, ( and no with thor- oughly destroyed nasal mucosa), Professor Liberman permitted us to take iuantitative Inorganic Analysis. After spending et least three weeks on calibrating our weights, and le rnint; the differences between a balf.nce and a scale, we were subjected to the principal principles of gravimet- ric analysis. It was fortunate for us that simultaneously the peculir.r havits end customs of the gremlins Tre.re studied in eneively. The grem- lins, and their cousins, the chemlins, provided the only logic;! answer for our getting results which had an tverage devit tion of t proximately

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seven hundred parts per thous;nd. After our in rouuction to volumetric analysis, e took a very scholarly interest in guessin e the volume of a drop. This estim.tion was essential when we went past an end-point (the change from an orchid-pink to ;: salmon-pink was particularly aifficult) and titrated beck from an eye-uroppcr. The Ignoble Order o: Uncon: cious Slopimetrists was en exclusive organisation, to which only the vorst of students could belong. Mere sloppiness mctnt nought. For membership, it was necessary to drop a new set of weights not more than one hour after calibration, break at least five articles of glassware in one big crash (two tared weighing bottles and two crucibles at constant weight, rest- ing in e desiccator was proscribed), go at least 10 cc. past a phenol- phtalein end-point, pour half a liter of recently stand rdizec 0.107854 normal silver nitrate into a bottle containing an unknov.n volume of re- cently standardized hydrochloric scic (C.C9o 7£ N), and do at letst two original stunts. The dues were ten broken bet-Jeers p- r year. Needles3 to say, the members of the I.O.U.E. are today Disking a name for themselves in the chemical world. (There is no adequate existing name). As every constipated person eventually does, we took Physics. In the little laboratory hidden away on the second floor there were innum- erable joyous moments afforded us. Under the gentle supervision of Pro- fessor Abe Taub, we gloried in the wonders of the amazing oscilloscope, the colorful polATiscope, the Geigjr counter (the one with toothbrushes and a clerk behind it), and the spectroscope. Mr. Anzelmi was a highly valuable assistant, especially for the periodic electrocutions. Gee, it was something marvelous how he was able to mark the exams by looking at us . We built up a capacious reservoir of knowledge, learning that Sound waves do not necessarily originate in the vicinity of Long Island, and that light Saves are ju6t as attractive as heavier ones. .7e had hoped that our sufferings would have been deemed complete but instead the faculty decided to give us some additional try-outs and so we struggled onward to our Junior Year. V7e learned all about ringing cash registers and the difficulties in trying to swindle insurance companies from Professor Freddy Lascoff . During the initial semester of pharmaceutical jurisprudence, before the orange moustache of Freddy ' s was flourishing, it was still possible to pass any examination by repeatedly emphasizing the importance of taking inventory. Next semester, after the Fuller brush had disappeared, and the upper lip was naked, a student had to emit a sufficient quantity of hot air to keep the upper lip comfortably .varm, or fail miserably. In Manufacturing II we became accustomed to taking six weeks per preparation, and learned of the economies of preparing ten times the a- mount called for. Our having to answer fifty How ' s, fihy ' s, and V,nich ' s every week forced us to learn either the pharmaceutical reasons in beck of every motion, or the usefulness of carbon paper. Dr. Brown, who suc- ceeded Professor Amsterdam as our foreman, had us each deliver a learn- ed dissertation on a pharmaceutical topic. T e each worried so much over stretching out the speech to twenty minutes, that after actually taking forty minutes we were less than htlf through. We never thought of cutting Dr. Itedden ' s Physiology course, and so we did it without thinking. The thyroidectomy, plastic surgery, and