October 5, 1895 
THE CHEMIST AND DRUGGIST 
535 
medical treatment” with which the press is flooded. He 
protested against the policy of sprinkling the community, 
by means of a more or less oratorical pepper-box, with the 
tit-bits of pathology, physiology, and hygiene. Contributions 
to the medical press, too, he urged should be intended to 
advance science, not to puff practitioners. He commented 
on the coarse, rude, and insulting language in which they 
treat those men of science and undoubted honour who, for 
instance, feel a conscientious objection to compulsory vacci- 
nation. Dictation is not dignity, he said, and the policy of 
kicking your opponents to death should hardly be the 
characteristic of the wonderful medical knowledge of the 
nineteenth century. 
At St. Mary’s, Dr. A. P. Laurie, spoke on the medical 
profession and unhealthy trades. The purpose of his paper 
was to advocate the employment of the certifying surgeons 
appointed under the Factory Acts tc assist the inspectors 
by expert advice and to observe the effects of the industries 
supervised. A more unsuitable subject for an introductory 
address could hardly have been devised. 
Mr. G. D. Pollock, at St. George’s, made idiosyncrasies 
the principal topic of his discourse. He mentioned the case 
of one pereon who could not partake of rice without suffering 
the most alarming symptoms. An experiment was tried on 
him by giving him biscuits each containing one grain of rice. 
He took two or three, and the feeling of discomfort coming 
on, he declared that if he had not known to the contrary he 
would have declared he had had some rice. Another person 
was always affected by a rash after taking any gooseberries. 
This rash appeared one evening at a dinner party after the 
champagne. The idiosyncratic susceptibility to opium and 
mercury in some persons was also alluded to. 
Dr. Copeman gave an account of the recent introduction 
of animal extracts, especially of the thyroid, to the West- 
minster students. In the course of his address he said that 
through the efforts of pharmaceutists simplicity of treat- 
ment, combined with accuracy of dosage, had been brought 
to such perfection that an ample supply of this extract 
for several days’ treatment could easily be carried in an 
ordinary pill-box. 
At Middlesex Dr. Julius Mickle very appropriately traced 
out the gradual process of a child acquiring knowledge by 
becoming familiar with an object, and applied this to the 
methods by which a medical student must learn his pro- 
fession. ^ 
Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson went to Liverpool and gave a 
lively address to the medical students of the University 
College there on examinations. The old system of examina- 
tion in the Royal College of Surgeons, be said, was for a 
student to be asked questions by half-a-dozen elderly gentle- 
men who generally examined after dinner and in an amiable 
mood, so that if a man was a gentlemanly fellow, had some 
common sense, and did not commit himself too much, it 
was all right. The examination had now been elaborated to 
such an extent, and was conducted with so much care, that 
he regretted to have to be obliged to criticise it.’ He 
would take away from any one examiner the power to pluck a 
man ; he would diminish the number of viva voce examinations ; 
and would do away with the practice of putting into a 
student’s hands a specimen in pathology put up in a bottle, 
whose convexity distorted the object, and of asking him to 
say on the instant what it was, let his nervous condition be 
what it might. He would put before a student a dozen 
s^cimens, and give him an hour to study them quietly. 
f'ivd voce examinations introduced an element of uncer- 
tainty ; because superficial men were often most expert at 
them. He also objected to questions extemporised by 
examiners. He would have all the questions that could be 
put to the student on a subject arranged and tabulated 
beforehand and published in a book, which would be a sort 
of catechism on that subject, and he would require examiners 
to take their questions from that book, and not allow them 
to put questions out of their own heads. His aim was ; o 
diminish the inflaence of the crotchety examiner, of the 
examiner who had a hobby, or the examiner who had gone 
very deeply into one particular subject. If the “ crammer ” 
taught the student the answer to all these questions, what 
harm 7 
Dr. Leech, at Leeds, disputed with Herbert Spencer tl 
pnestly origin of medicine ; and Dr. Percy Frankland. i 
Birmingham, gave a sketch of the life of Pasteur. 
Ipereonalitiee. 
Edward Youkg-, the Valkyrie's pilot, used to be a drug 
clerk in St. John, N.B., and New York. So the Ccmadianr- 
Druggist says. 
Mr. H. E. Crawford left for Montreal last Saturday to 
! establish in that city an agency for the Dominion of Canada 
i for the sale of the essential oils distilled by the firm of^ 
I H. Rubeck, of 59 Mark Lane, E.C. 
I Mr. Thomas Tyrer, President of the Society of Chemical 
j Industry, left for New Fork by the Paris on Saturday. He- 
and Mr. Ludwig Mond, F.R S , are to make a tour of the 
United States together. The New York Section of the 
Society of Chemical Industry will give them a reception oi> 
October 14. 
It seems to be getting fashionable for American professors* 
of pharmacy to take a post graduate coarse in Europe. The 
last to do this is Professor J. O. Schlotterbeck, of the School 
of Pharmacy, Michigan University, who is at Bern, Switzer- 
land, studying under Dr. Tschirch. He cycled from Ham- 
burg to Bern. 
Mr. F. R. Squire, the English chemist of San Remo, Italy, 
who has been travelling in this country and on the Continent 
during the summer for Messrs. Hertz & Coilingwood, intro- 
ducing their Coca-tonic and Sans-sucre Champagne, returns 
to San Remo this week. His pharmacy at San Remo is only 
open during the winter months. 
Mr. E. S. Woottojt, chemist and druggist. High Street, 
Margate, and who is Mayor of the Borough, entertained the 
members of the Borough police force, male staff at the Post- 
office, and members of the Fire Brigade and Ambulance 
Corps at dinner on the evening of Thursday in last week. 
His Worship presided, the guests numbering over 120. On 
the previous^ day Mr. Wootton, as Chief Magistrate of the 
Borough, visited the Channel Squadron, which was anchored' 
off the jetty. 
Mr. M. Lawson, the Superintendent of the Indian Govern- 
ment Gardens and Cinchona Plantation on the Nilgiris, has 
retired from active service. Mr. Lawson, who was formerly 
Professor of Botany at Oxford, and in charge of the exquisite 
garden which stretches along the bank of the Cherwell, went 
out to India in 1883 at the instance of Sir M. E. Grant Duff. 
Since then, in addition to the administration of the Govern- 
ment Gardens, he has established and worked, unaided by 
any expert assistance, the Indian Government’s Qainine- 
Factory, 
In his address at Bloomsbury Square on Wednesday 
Professor Roberts alluded to Mr. Carteighe’s mountaineering 
proclivities, and to a danger from which he recently escaped, 
remarking that it was good for the Pharmaceutical Society 
that crevasses are not always so wide as they are deep. Few' 
in the audience understood the allusion. We understand 
that during his recent holiday the President of the Society, 
accompanied by two friends, was doing a bit of climbing of 
no great magnitude for such experienced men, so they were 
not roped. Suddenly Mr. Carteighe stepped on less solid 
ground than he is accustomed to tread, but the crevasse- 
was not a wide one, and he succeeded in grasping the sides 
and raising himself without incurring serious injury. 
The IlendorsonviUe Times, an illustrated journal published 
in North Carolina, in a descriptive account of the growth of 
Bowman’s Bluff, a picturesque district of the State, speaks 
of a Mr. George Holmes as a gentleman who has done a 
great deal towards the development of the district. In early 
life Mr. Holmes was a chemist and druggist in Gooch Street 
and Bristol Road, Birmingham. After marrying he emi- 
giated to America and settled there. Bowman’s Bluff, therr 
but little advanced in its infancy, was the spot Mr. Holmes 
fixed upon for his future home. That was in 1881, and 
since that period rnany representatives of cultured English 
lamihes have established themselves at Bowman’s Bluff the 
natmal beauty of which is now enhanced by a number of 
handsome residences. Mr. Holmes is one of the leading 
cit:z8cs, ard prcmicent among Church woikers. 
