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

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sive one we had ever taken. Since we weren ' t permitted to handle the instruments we couldn ' t break anything! We worked in teams, and while one partner turned dials and looked scientific, the other partner made carbon copies of a previous term ' s report. The most embarrassing outgrowth of this reasearch was the fact that we sometimes had to explain results for experiments that were not on the lab schedule. Now that we were raking analytical chemistry, we again came in contact with our interviewer, Prof. Liberman and his son Herbert. In the freshman year, we always wondered what the students were doing in that little lab around the corner. It looked intriguing but WOWEE! All those who were color-blind or who couldn ' t tell a pre- cipitate from a hole in the ground are now prosperous plumbers. We were taught that accuracy and precision were the watchwords, and finagling the byword of our year in analytical chemistry. When in doubt about the fourth place in a determination, we found that multipling the room number by our age and dividing our results by ' Herbert ' s ' age always did the trick. We also found rhat the end point in a titration was a point of no return. We soon were able to tell by the color of the solution how many extra drops we had added. Pipetting cleaning fluid was forbidden, for several students dissolved their bridgework by being over zealous in their work. Reports were forbidden to be written during lab hours, so it became necessary to take frequent trips to the writing room, better known as the sixth floor men ' s room. We always wondered where the girls wrote their reports! The work in the pharmacy lab concerned itself with the lost and somewhat anti- quated art of the manufacture of galenicals. Who would ever think that percolation was anything but a method of making coffee? It was in this lab that we were first introduced to the rat race . However, a method was soon devised to overcome this obstacle. Several conscientious students would prepare the product and affix the label with non-drying glue. After the preparation was marked it would disapper mysteriously, only to turn up ?.gain on another desk with another label. Somehow we felt that the instructors frowned upon this procedure, but it seemed to prove certain fallacies in the marking system. It seems that the same product would get different marks ranging from fifty to one- hundred depending upon which student was supposed to have prepared it. Aside from the required preparations, several extra products were manufactured in the lab by am- bitious students. But despite this display of ingenuity on our part, several of the class were asked to pack up their teabags and distilleries and leave the lab. Thus ended our second year at pharmacy school. Those that remained were hardened to the trials before them and the tribulations to come.

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lectures were also exams. It seemed as rhough the lecture material was covered in the ten minute breaks. There was also an ingenious arrangement of seats during exam periods. Those with the highest averages were the farrhest from the proctor and the nearest to God. Those who needed help most were forced to sit in the front row and receive sympathetic looks from Prof. Bailey. During the second half of the first year, the students in the first row mysteriously departed from the school and the second row moved forward en masse. Until my freshman year at C.U.C.P. living was a simple process. I ate when I was hungry, slept when I was tired, and never gave a second thought to breathing. How- ever, my contact with Zoology and Mortormorlie ' s uncle taught me differently. When I realized how much effort is required to live, I decided to give it all up and remain a student. Formerly, eating a meat sandwich was a natural act, but after listening to the original creator of the blonde shicksa, mealtimes became the scene of the some of the goriest internal battles in history. I was to be the battleground. The salivary enzymes, act- ing as advance scouts, secreted themselves behind my tongue, awaiting the approach of enemy meat. Quickly the meat sandwich overcame the scouts sustaining few losses. Led by General Peristalsis, the main bolus of the army advanced confidently down the canal. With cries of vicrory, happy gurgling, and a few burps, it rushed toward the cardiac sphincter. It was now or never, up or down. The bolus entered the stomach unsuspect- ingly, and suddenly chaos reigned. The battle was short and furious. Ten hours and fifteen pages of notes later, what remained of the once proud meat sandwich finally left us. A rose by any other name would be just as confusing. This was the creed of our botany course. One of the texts required for the completion of the course was road map leading into Monticello, for to have seen the Ginko is to have lived. Oh! Those unique exams. Nine pages of, The of... is found because it is So ended the first year! Those that made it were a little sadder, a little wiser, but still in one piece. Second Vft ear Until now, Columbia University centered around the sixty-eighth street campus. Since we had to take the physics course uptown, we soon made contact with ' Joe College ' . You could always tell when we had invaded stately Pupin Hall, for the solemn dignity of its halls was soon shattered by the moans and groans of future pharmacists. Our mild-mannered instructor Dr. Sachs, realizing our minds would he elsewhere, implored us to remain quiet and not feed the squirrels that scampered outside our lec- ture hall window. Our interest was centered on the lecturer only during demonstrations, for it became exceedingly difficult to read the New York Times when the lecture hall lights were turned out. The lab course, too, was interesting as it was the most inexpen-

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Jnird iJjt ear I had never given much thought to life insurance before taking Organic Chemistry, but now I am a firm believer in it. The standard uniform of the day in the organic lab was shock helmet, aspirator, bullet proof apron, and a rabbit ' s foot. Even so, students were carried out of the lab every day, horribly mutilated. I can still remember that chlorosulphonic acid should not be added to water unless the student has suicidal inten- tions. Almost as terrifying as the chemicals was the equipment we used. This terror manifested itself in the knowledge that every piece of equipment used was a piece broken. To a laymen entering our lab, it would appear as though a neurotic glass blower had gone crazy and festooned the room with a weird assortment of his handiwork. To offset the tumult in the lab we were given a nice, quiet, soothing lecture conducted by Professor Whiz-bang DiSomma, the world ' s fastest blackboard writer this side of Tibet. The class would assemble, and a lab instructor would take the attendance. Then a gun would go off and the race, I mean the lecture, was on. For a while we thought we could catch him, but as the weeks passed we realized he had won. Because of the terrifying reports that the upperclassmen had given us about Pro- fessor Kanig, the class entered Room 10 for the first time a little reluctantly. In fact, a few of us were dragged in by Pete. But after listening to Joe Kanig talk for a while, we came to the conclusion that he was human. That is, until he handed out the first set of prescriptions. Then we weren ' t so sure anymore. To think that we felt that tech lab was a rat race when all the time it was like a Florida vacation compared to dispensing. We always wondered why the floors of the lab were so clean and we soon realized that since each student stands in his own puddle of sweat, the floors are washed constantly. The prescriptions that we compounded were real doozies. During one period we might be asked to make, enteric-coated Quassia suppositories, white pills, (containing charcoal), potassium permanganate troches, and mercury mass in a tube. This was to be done in a four hour period, two of which were taken up by Professor Kanig telling us what we were going to do wrong. However the part of the course that we dreaded most was the practicals. Armed with a U.S. P., N.F., and five shiny spatulas we set out to prove that we were not as ignorant as out previous two years had shown. Despite the ner- vous breakdowns and the years lost by worry, we can still say that this course taught us the most in our four years at Columbia. Just when we thought it was going to be a normal year, up pops Mortormorly ' s uncle with a little gem called Physiology. As soon as we saw ' Doc ' we prepared for the second largest shaft in the world. Some may call this course a science, but still I contend that it was butchery. Frogs that were pithed, decapitated, de-muscled, dissected, and generally in pretty bad shape were strewn all over the lab. The garbage can in front looked like something Jack-the-Ripper might have kept in the front of his house. I personally think that a frog did Prof. Halsey a dirty turn once and this was his way of getting even.