196 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
[September 7,1872. 
your occupation becomes more and more remunerative. 
I speak now not as a representative of tbe profession to 
which I belong, but entirely as an individual. I rather 
wonder that your efforts have not become more unani¬ 
mously and strenuously directed towards taking away 
from the profession to which I belong that practice of 
medical men of dispensing their own medicines, which 
certainly does not properly belong to them. It seems to 
me that when that is thoroughly established, a great 
many of these problems with which you are dealing to¬ 
day will meet with their solution tolerably readily. And 
now for one other remark about examinations. As your 
President said, I have hadrecently and for some years 
past, a great deal to do with examinations. I have never 
had the pleasure of meeting Professor Tait, and if I had 
I am sure I should not be a third to add to those two 
with w r hom he has already had to do. But I have made 
my observations as I have gone along, and I tell you 
plainly that the more I examine, the less secure and the 
less safe and the less satisfied do I become with the task 
of examining. The word cram, which was introduced 
with an apology by your President to-day, is a word 
which is before me always. It is a nightmare to me and 
worries me all my life long. From day to day, and from 
week to week, and from month to month, I find myself 
doing nothing but fighting against this fearful system of 
cram. _ I have no doubt Professor Attfield thinks very 
badly indeed of the cram, 'which is manifested at your 
pharmaceutical examination. I do not know ; it may be 
worse than the cram which manifests itself at the Civil 
Service examination. Very certainly that same spectre 
is to be seen at South Kensington; and, alas ! I meet it 
again and again even in those wonderful walls of the 
London University. You have no idea of the energy 
which is spent by a certain number of men in cheating the 
examiner energy which might be far better bestowed. 
The process of cramming means that you send up a lad, 
and you make him appear to the examiner as if he knew 
that which he does not know. The first thing that the 
cram-man or grinder does is to make himself acquainted 
with the mind of the examiner—acquainted with all his 
little foibles and peculiarities. For .instance, if a cram- 
man had to prepare a pupil for the gentleman at the 
other end of the platform [Mr. Stoddart], he would say 
to the pupil, “ Be very careful how you hold your scales.” 
They understand all those little means by which the 
examiner arrives at a conclusion. You may depend 
upon it that if you only have a short examination or a 
hurried one, the cram-man, the grinder, wall beat you. 
U y°u give the examiner time enough, and allow 
especially, a practical examination, then he 
will have a greater power over the candidate. I 
cannot at all understand Professor Attfield saying, in 
his paper this morning, that it is easier to cheat at the 
practical examination than at the theoretical one. I 
know of no examination at which it would be easier to 
cheat than at the examination in chemical riddles, as 
they may be called, which, to my mind, afford no ex¬ 
amination in chemistry at all. But a real practical 
examination, depend upon it, puts greater difficulties in 
the way of the grinder than anything else. The great 
element, however, is time, whether it be an examination 
with written papers, or a viva voce examination. If you 
have a viva voce examination, half your time has to be 
spent in putting the candidate into a comfortable posi- 
tion. You have two things to do. You have to cheer 
up the nervous man. He may possess the knowledge 
} ou are seeking, or he may be putting on the nervous¬ 
ness in order to cheat you. Y ou do not know, and you 
ha\e to wait and see whether it is real nervousness or 
not; and you require a very great deal of time in order 
to conduct the examination thoroughly and satisfac- 
**7- ^ cann °t say what your arrangements may be 
—whether they are such as to admit of your examina¬ 
tions being lengthened very- considerably. ‘ I have heard 
something about a quarter ofan hour or ten minutes. That 
seems to me gone at once in an examination. I want hours • 
I want days; nay, if I were to speak my whole mind, I 
should say I required weeks of examination before I 
should say that a man was fit to pass. Y"ou say that is 
impracticable, and it is to a very large extent. And here 
comes another opinion, which certainly has been growing 
up in my own mind with.increasing force for some time 
past; that is, the necessity of having some evidence 
before the lad comes up of his having been taught. I 
do not mean attending lectures. I was a medical stu¬ 
dent, and I am perfectly aware of the ridiculous folly of 
attending lectures. I attended lectures with a kind of 
official conscience, which was common at least in my 
days in various hospitals, and I know myself I have been 
signed for attending lectures which I could not possibly 
have attended, except with the destruction of my medical 
education. Y r ery frequently the students occupy the 
time of the lecture in drawing caricatures of the lecturer 
and reading books, and so on. Y"ou cannot do any good 
by simply requiring attendance on the lectures; but this 
you can do. Suppose a boy has been taught for a length, 
of time by a conscientious man who loves the subject 
which he is teaching. There is no man better fitted to 
tell the worth of that boy’s knowledge than the man 
who has taught him for such a length of time; but you 
cannot trust the man alone, because men will put a little 
strain on their conscience, and give their friends a certifi¬ 
cate. How can you get over this ? It is practicable to- 
join together the examiner and the teacher. Let every 
lad have a testimony from a teacher in whom you have 
confidence of his having* studied the subject 'well and 
thoroughly for a certain length of time. If you do that, 
you can then give him a far shorter examination at the 
hands of a technical examiner; and if the two results 
agree, I.would put any amount of money on the result 
that he is a fit boy who knows the subject on which he 
has been examined. But then you must have a certain 
number of recognized teachers. And here allow me to 
make one observation, and that is, that it seems to me, 
with regard especially to schools of pharmacy, that it is 
not necessary that you should establish big schools like 
that in Bloomsbury Square. Do not take yourselves 
away altogether from the efforts which have been made 
to establish science schools in various parts of the coun¬ 
try. Y ou require botany and chemistry. I am not aware 
that the chemistry which belongs to the pharmaceutist 
is different from that chemistry which a chemist himself 
possesses, or which a medical man possesses. YYTiy not 
let your lads get their chemistry from recognized chemis¬ 
try teachers ? And the same with botany. I was very 
glad to hear one gentleman say that he did not believe 
in pharmaceutical chemistry. No more do I. Surely 
you will achieve the end in view, if you have chemistry 
and botany taught thoroughly by teachers upon whom 
you can depend in all parts of the kingdom. 
Mr. R. W . Giles : In common with every one in this 
room I have listened to that address of Dr. Foster with 
the greatest pleasure and satisfaction, and I have found 
that.ho has entirely and eloquently expressed those 
opinions which have long influenced my mind upon this 
subject. I am not proposing now to discuss this question 
thoroughly, but I wish to call attention to a point which 
appears to me to be an essential point lying at the 
origin of our discussion, and w r hich has been rather 
slightly treated of to-day. I fancy that, practically, the 
question which we have to consider is really, what are 
our relations, as a corporate body in another place, to 
this question of education ? I apprehend, sir, that there 
is no difference amongst us about the fact that educa¬ 
tion is essential for the rising generation of pharmacists ; 
and I imagine also, that there is no difference of opinion 
amongst ourselves as to our readiness and our desire to 
promote education, although it may not be an absolute 
obligation which we have undertaken. But we feel per¬ 
sonally anxious to co-operate in affording those facilities 
which are essential for those who enter the business* 
