Abstract
THE opportunities which the present rapid advances in science offer to the student formed the text of the address delivered by Dr. C. W. Kimmins at the opening of the School of Pharmacy of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain on Oct. 5. For the scientific research worker there are all sorts of important problems awaiting solution. A student of organic chemistry frequently encounters puzzles such as this: a substance is known as a natural product of groat medicinal value; the chemist works upon it and finds that a substance can be produced synthetically apparently exactly similar, yet the physiological properties may differ in a marked degree. Many of these problems of the different action of synthetic and natural substances have been solved, but delightful fields for research remain. Even in a limited field, to have extended the bounds of human knowledge must over be a source of intense gratification to the worker. To take another example, in physical analysis, scientific workers at one time concentrated exclusively on the elements of the visual spectrum; but of late years a groat transformation has taken place. Men of science are concentrating on the larger wave-lengths on one side and the smaller wave-lengths on the other, with the relative neglect of the intermediate wave-lengths. When the ultra-violet part is successfully charted and carefully studied it will cast a wonderful flood of light on physiological processes, especially upon the growth of plants, so many of which are materially affected by stimuli associated with minute wave-lengths. With such advances in science and the solution of previously apparently insolvable problems, it is not to be wondered that the enthusiastic student of to-day has developed a spirit of adventure unknown in former days.
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Pharmacy and Recent Advances in Science. Nature 130, 575–576 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130575c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130575c0