THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL. 
SECOND SERIES. 
VOL. X.—No. VIII.—FEBRUARY, 1869. 
PREPARING POR EXAMINATION. 
The new era we have entered upon in pharmacy has opened out a wide¬ 
spread inquiry for the means of acquiring technical knowledge where syste¬ 
matic instruction has not hitherto been provided. Scraps of learning picked 
up incidentally will no longer serve to fit the pharmaceutical student for his 
intended position. Crude, undigested, and disjointed facts, with a little prac¬ 
tical knowledge of the routine of shop duties, are insufficient to qualify him for 
the certificate he must obtain from a board of examiners before he can present 
himself to the public as a competent pharmaceutist. The voluntary system of 
pharmaceutical education, which has been in operation for the last quarter of 
a century, has been too partial in its operation, and the means of applying it 
have not been sufficiently diffused throughout the country, to enable all those 
now requiring instruction, under the altered circumstances of their position, 
to enter at once upon an efficient method of preparing for the ordeal to which 
they must submit themselves. 
How shall the young men who have commenced the study of pharmacy, who 
are still apprentices or assistants without any certificates of qualification, or 
with only such as were granted at the commencement of apprenticeship,—how 
shall these prepare themselves for the examinations to be passed before they can 
be registered as Chemists and Druggists or Pharmaceutical Chemists P This 
question is asked from month to month by hundreds of anxious youths who be¬ 
came pharmaceutical students before examinations were compulsory, and who, 
with limited means, are now compelled to seek the easiest method of bringing 
themselves within the requirements of the law. 
We would willingly assist these young men to accomplish their object by 
pointing out the way in which they may make self-instruction available for the 
purpose. In doing so, however, it must be clearly understood that we depre¬ 
cate any system of mere cramming. Knowledge, to be permanent and useful, 
must be built up, like a house or other permanent building, by successive addi¬ 
tions judiciously made upon a solid foundation. It is not by heaping together 
any materials that may happen to come to hand, nor even by putting together 
the proper materials without any consideration of the order in which they are 
arranged, that a satisfactory result will be obtained. In the first place, there 
must be a well-defined conception of what the structure is to be, aud what pur¬ 
pose it is intended to fulfil. Without a clear notion of design, of the adapta¬ 
tion of one part to another, and of the order in which the several parts should 
be placed, no satisfactory progress can be made in the work of construction. 
Great pains must be taken in laying the foundations well. The foundation- 
YOL. X. 2 I 
