June 21, 1873.] 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
1027 
*** No notice can be taken of anonymous communica¬ 
tions. Whatever is intended for insertion must be authenti¬ 
cated by the name and address of the writer; not necessarily 
for 'publication, but as a guarantee of good faith. 
British Pharmaceutical Conference.—Meeting 
of 1874 
Sir,—I write to express a hope that no action will he 
taken on the resolution of the Executive Committee of the 
Conference respecting the place of meeting for 1874, until 
the subject has been more fully considered. 
It follows from the language of that resolution that the 
whole of Ireland should be closed against the meetings of 
the British Pharmaceutical Conference, which is a serious 
conclusion to arrive at in committee, if, indeed, it is not a 
breach of geographical propriety. 
I have no wish to argue the point upon the scanty infor¬ 
mation now before us, and will only say that for all that 
we yet know, the reasons for departing from a good prece¬ 
dent appear exceedingly unsubstantial. 
Richard W. Giles. 
Clifton, June 16th, 1873. 
Pharmaceutical Education. 
Sir,—I have observed with considerable interest the 
appointment by the Council of a Committee to inquire 
into the condition and necessity of continuing the School 
of Pharmacy in Bloomsbury Square. As an old student 
of the school permit me to say that, for a man who has 
thoroughly qualified himself in shop routine and dispensing, 
the attendance at the lectures delivered by our learned 
professors (and I speak from experience) is the most com¬ 
plete finish a pharmaceutist can possibly desire. That the 
fees should be raised I am perfectly sure, for I have it on 
the testimony of several students who have attended the 
courses of lectures during the last few years, that the 
classes (very unlike the old ones) are very noisy, and men 
who go there to study are often so interrupted that on two 
occasions students have complained to me that if matters 
got much worse it would be scarcely worth their while to 
attend at all. Now higher lecture fees and an absolute 
power vested in those excellent lecturers to cancel the 
permission to attend of any student misconducting himself 
in any way would, I believe, give the classes greater popu¬ 
larity than they now possess. 
The word “cram” has been used pretty freely lately, 
evidently with a very different meaning. To teach che¬ 
mistry and botany by a system of cram may deprive students 
of the very many advantages arising from regular attend¬ 
ance and attention to the professors’ lectures. But what I 
object to is, that the examiners in practical dispensing and 
pharmacy cannot tell a well-taught and experienced dis¬ 
penser from a man who has scarcely ever prepared medicine 
in his life, but who has gained the cue necessary to meet 
the questions of the examiners, by making a few emulsions, 
etc., whose destiny is the sink, and pills divided and sil¬ 
vered, only to decorate the dust-heap. I know that fifteen 
years ago students dreaded the dispensing counter of the 
examination room more than any other, and I believe that 
twenty years ago practical dispensing was not enforced at 
all. How is it now ? 
For the diploma of the Society to possess any “money 
value” at all, it must ensure that the man who holds it is 
competent to be left in full charge of a dispensing esta¬ 
blishment, without risk or inconvenience. It is in this 
practical point that cram is so utterly reprehensible. For 
when is a man asked in his business the Natural Order of 
a medicinal plant ? or whether medicines are cells or con¬ 
tents of cells ? or the composition of a chemical ? True, 
he might to know them all; but to do so a student of ten 
years’ standing (for we must always be students) would 
liave to turn to a recent class-book or his recent knowledge 
to answer correctly and according to the last turn of the 
scientific votaries’ kaleidoscope. Carbonate of ammonia 
or ammonium may contain carbamate too. But a man 
who puts one dram of that salt into a three-ounce bottle 
with one dram and a half of citric acid, and deliberately 
fills it with water, when in a hurry for the medicine, exhi¬ 
bits a want of training and experience more to be de¬ 
plored than the profoundest knowledge of chemical memory 
can make amends. And during the last six years in a 
shop in a. large provincial town, where several assistants 
were buzzing behind the counter, I have had to beg for 
and obtained a mortar, and have mixed the medicine my¬ 
self on the customers’ side of the counter. A medical man 
not long ago asked me what was the best thing to make 
three grains of reduced iron and two grains of powdered 
rhubarb into a moderately-sized pill, for he assured me he 
had it made of all sizes, in London too. I have heard it 
solemnly stated, even at Bloomsbury Square, that glycerine 
and fats will mix on no conditions whatever. These are of 
the genus of facts that damn chemists in the eyes of medi¬ 
cal men, and furnish the mould on which flourish the moss 
that grows on dead men’s skulls, who in life were distin¬ 
guished by a thorough knowledge of their business, and 
above all, by a high moral rectitude; and the Pharmaceu¬ 
tical Society will fail in its function if, by its influence and 
teaching, it does not extend among its members that confi¬ 
dence so well deserved, but centred in comparatively few, 
by physicians, medical men, and the public. 
George Mee. 
79, Grosvenor Road, Highbury New Park, 
June 16th, 1873. 
“ Hospital Sunday.” 
Sir,—The 15th of June, 1873, has come and gone. 
“Hospital Sunday” has been weighed in the balance 
and, happily, has not been found wanting. The great 
experiment of appealing to the pocket from the pulpit for 
aid in ministering to the suffering and the sick, who, at the 
same time, in the hard battle of life, take their rank with 
the needy and the poor (in addition to other means to the- 
same end, though on widely different grounds), has been 
attended with a most encouraging success. The idea, 
transferred from the provinces, has been readily adopted 
by the great metropolis, and “ Hospital Sunday ” will now 
become a permanent institution amongst us. For replenish¬ 
ing, in great part, the funds of our large hospitals and in¬ 
firmaries, “ annual festivals ” are held in which the stomach 
is appealed to, and after-dinner speeches are made which 
rarely fail to elicit a most praiseworthy and successful 
endeavour to supply the “urgently needed” assistance. 
But in the scheme of “Hospital Sunday” not a single 
stomach is involved or asked to take a part. Should that 
capricious member rebel on the morrow, the festival, so to 
speak, of the preceding day will be entirely innocent of the 
cause. Upon far higher grounds than this did the religious 
community of London on Sunday last pour their treasures 
of silver and gold into the official plate as politely handed 
from pew to pew. The one sentiment sought to be incul¬ 
cated throughout—putting aside for the moment all points 
of doctrine which unhappily divide and split up the various 
phases of faith, until the truth ever lies “ deeper and deeper 
still”—was involved in the aphorism or text, “Inasmuch as 
ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, 
ye have done it unto me.” The heart and the affections 
formed the channel through and by which the lesson was 
to be learnt and the grand effort made. “ By all your 
hopes of happiness hereafter,” said, in effect, one eloquent 
preacher—“ by all that you hold dear in your moral and 
religious life—by the example and the acts of the Saviour 
himself—by the sympathy and Christian love you owe one 
to another, I call upon you this day to do your duty.” 
How nobly the response came to this and similar appeals 
is now well known. 
But the question has a scientific not less than a religious 
aspect. There are many ways of healing the sick, and 
some of them very curious, not to say novel or remarkable. 
Theories are plentiful but results are few. It was not long 
since that an enthusiastic savant, presumably of a mate¬ 
rialistic turn of mind, proposed to test the efficacy of 
prayer by isolating a hospital ward for the purpose, and 
then subjecting the results to a careful analysis. If this is 
to be the direction of our scientific and medical studies, 
surely other institutions than hospitals, equally significant, 
will flourish amongst us. Far better acknowledge our 
utter inability to comprehend the phenomena of health 
and disease, and commend, in all humility and with suitable 
aspirations, our sick and suffering poor to the great Parent 
