September 7,1872.] THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
191 
nent scheme of aiding scientific education throughout 
the country. Indeed, I am quite free to admit that it 
is founded upon the Government scheme; but it is not 
the Government scheme, and those who suppose that I 
have adopted it because it is the Government scheme 
are naking a strange and foolish blunder. It is not the 
sarm, but the principle is identical with it; and I am 
quite willing to admit that I owe everything to the 
suggestions which that scheme has given. And allow 
me to add that I do not consider it at all an argument 
for the weakness and uselessness of the scheme, as it 
stands, that it has stood the test .of a great many years’ 
trial at the hands of the Government authorities. As 
I have said two or three times, any one who is in the 
smallest degree interested in this subject can find the 
whole details in the volume issued by the department 
year by year, for the price of sixpence. I really do | 
not like to allude to charges which are unsubstan-1 
tiated by a name, for anonymous charges are things 
which one would rather leave alone; but there have 
been assertions made that the scheme of the Govern¬ 
ment has only just escaped a collapse, that every one 
who knows anything of it is disgusted—pupils and 
teachers alike, and that there is this year only one 
sixth of the number of pupils there was in recent years. 
I ask any one who has seen those assertions to be kind 
enough, in simple candour, to look at that book. If he 
does not feel disposed to take the trouble, I can tell him 
that I have gone carefully over the numbers, and though 
I do not claim a right to defend the Government scheme, 
I think it is only fair that I should take this oppor¬ 
tunity to state that there have been more classes in 
the last year than in any year that has preceded it,— 
that there are something like 34,000 students in the 
classes now, and that there were 7600 more in the 
last year than in the year before. Those are figures 
which are as easily as possible ascertained by any one 
who will take the trouble to turn over the pages of that 
book. Be that as it may, sir, the question for us to 
consider is, of course, what will suit our purposes the best. 
I should myself be very glad indeed to adopt the best 
process whatever it may be. I mean to advocate it as 
far as my power on the Council will enable me to do so. 
Mr. Reynolds is here, and several gentlemen who en¬ 
dorse his views are here. Let us by all means gather 
w r hy we should expect so much better results to show 
themselves, when our schools for scientific culture are 
limited to a few, rather than when we endeavour, if 
possible, to extend the aid of our Society generally and 
systematically throughout the country. 
Mr. Stoddaiit said : Both the proposed schemes .hinge 
upon the same thing, namely, that we who are in the 
country should aim to give our younger friends the benefit 
of a good education so far as regards pharmacy. If w T e 
were about to make a commercial speculation, we should 
count the cost, and would rather seek a real basis to 
work upon than an imaginary one. Therefore, if we 
have this money to spare in Bloomsbury Square, I should 
prefer spending it in the way by which I should get the 
most reliable results. I think, and have often thought, 
that we make two errors, and those errors are very com¬ 
mon I know, because I hear them expressed very fre¬ 
quently as I am moving about the country. There is 
this first of all—that we ought to, as it were, make every¬ 
thing straight for a lot of young men to enter into our 
profession. Now, once for all, I am diametrically opposed 
to that. I say it is not correct. We want to make our 
profession a good profession. We want to raise the 
status here as well as in other parts of the country. We 
who are now in business will probably never reap so 
much benefit from this as our sons and grandsons will; 
but, nevertheless, we want to leave them a good heritage, 
and I do not see at all, if we make pharmacy a good pro¬ 
fession worth having, why we should collect all the 
young men we can and coax them into it. If they wish 
to come, let them come, but they must prove themselves 
good enough to come, because it is self-evident that if we 
take just anybody we never shall improve our status. 
It will continue to be like what it is in the present day, 
when we have all sorts of people with us. But, if a 
hundred young men were to come to me and say to me, 
“We do not want to shirk the examination; will you 
help us F ” I would help them with the greatest plea¬ 
sure in the world, but I would not make these examina¬ 
tions so low and so easy that they could not help passing 
them. I hope that no person here or elsewhere will ever 
take a pupil^or an apprentice who has not passed the Pre¬ 
liminary examination. In the city in which I live I am 
frequently called upon to go into the different schools, to 
examine the boys, and it is an invariable practice with 
me when I go there never to ask them anything difficult. 
For instance, if I am going to examine them in arith¬ 
metic I know very well that if I were to ask them an 
abstruse question, it would be answered in a moment; 
but, I say, “ You go into the market and buy so many 
pecks of potatoes, and I will give you a £5 note—what 
is the change ?and, I will wager, I should not get a 
correct answer. I assure you such is the fact. Only 
last week a gentleman came and gave mo a suggestion. 
I said, “ Really, I can hardly credit it.” He said, “Come 
with me into a school where there are 200 boys—boys 
that have passed an examination in the most wonderful 
way.” They were able to answer difficult questions 
which, perhaps, I should have made a mistake in. I i.rst 
of all my friend gave them a question to solve, which 
they did without the slightest hesitation. Then I 
said, “ Buy me a dozen apples at so and so, and a 
dozen pecks of potatoes, and here is a five-pound note; 
what will be the change ? ” and there was not one that 
could tell me. It is the same with our Preliminary 
examinations. I appeal to anybody here who is a local 
secretary, and he will say that it is in the simple things, 
the ground-work of education, that neglect occurs. 
Now, I say, let us never take a pupil unless he has passed 
a Preliminary. Say to him, “ When you have done that, 
come, and we will take you, and we will do our best to 
help you along.” Now comes what I consider to be the 
basis of the scheme we ought to adopt. I do not care 
at all, as Mr. Schacht says he does not care, whether it 
is his scheme or Mr. Reynold’s scheme or anybody 
else’s. Like him I simply want the best. Now Mr. 
Schacht’s scheme I like excessively. It is that we must 
not do the work for them. Let those in the countity 
help themselves, and then we will help them along after¬ 
wards, but we must not go and found a school for them. 
Mr. Schacht knows as well as I do the work we havn 
done in Bristol, and he knows very well that we have 
been very successful. Mr. Giles will tell you the very 
same thing ; and he will tell you that the plan we go 
upon there is to make every one do the best, and then 
we help him; but we do not help them to take any 
illegal step. Now, with regard to this horrid word 
“ cramming,” it sets one’s teeth on edge to hear it so many 
times. It is a very disagreeable word, and the thing is 
one not to be upheld for a moment. But I understand 
the word in a somewhat different sense from that, in 
which it has been used by Mr. Schacht.. I do not think 
that cramming in the practical sense is putting three 
months knowledge into one month. I may have a pupil 
to whom I give two lessons a week, the course extending 
over three months; but suppose he is a haid-w.oiking 
pupil, and says, “I will work every day; I will do it all in 
a month that is not the kind of cramming which Pro¬ 
fessor Attfield means. What he speaks of is an illegitimate 
way of doing it, which is cheating and nothing else. I 
should have thought the examiners could easily find out 
whether a boy was taught properly or not. Having 
been in the business for nearly a third of a century, I 
would not hesitate to say that if any young man in the 
world were to come to me, and I gave him a pestle and 
mortar and a pair of scales to dispense a prescription, 
before he weighed out the very first item I should know 
