January 20,1872.] THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
593 
rejected candidates. You all know that not unfrequently 
able and thoroughly well qualified men fail, and that 
others, though quite incompetent, succeed. From my 
own experience I can state that young men upon whom 
I had every reason to look as ornaments to our profes¬ 
sion,—who had worked hard and earnestly, and whose 
knowledge and abilities ought to have carried them 
through the Major with honours, have been rejected 
in the Minor and even in the Modified examinations. 
Such, I am ready to admit, are rare exceptions, hut they 
are exceptions of a kind which ought never to occur ; 
whilst instances in which candidates of lesser preten¬ 
sions, though in every respect amply qualified for their 
duties, have met with the same fate, are far more 
common. 
In the face of such facts, it is, I believe, the duty of all 
chemists and druggists to understand the causes of the 
many unnecessary failures, and to exert themselves, in¬ 
dividually and as a body, to remove those causes by de¬ 
manding a reform of the present system of examinations. 
That something is wrong is felt by almost everybody in¬ 
terested in the matter, for nobody can bring himself to 
believe in the real unfitness of so great a number of men 
as are annually turned back ; and I will now endeavour 
to show you, as well as I can, what there is wrong. 
In forming our judgment on tins important point, we 
must receive with due caution the reports of unsuccessful 
candidates, who are often disposed to conceal or mitigate 
their own shortcomings, and to find fault with the exa¬ 
miners. "What they tell us of their own nervousness, and 
how this was increased by the examiners’ harshness, 
cannot be generally considered as impartial; and though 
there is little doubt that, in many instances, some of the 
examiners have failed to remove the excitement and 
temporary confusion of nervous candidates where they 
could have done so, and that in some cases such an ex¬ 
cited state of mind has actually been augmented by un¬ 
called-for harshness and impatience, yet there is evidence 
enough to show that the majority of the examiners have 
not neglected their duty in this respect. Therefore, I 
do not believe many of the failures alluded to can be 
attributed to nervousness. Neither can I share the 
opinion entertained by many that luck has a great deal 
to do with success or failure in our examinations, though 
I do not dispute altogether that luck or ill-luck may 
have a little influence on the place which a successful 
candidate’s name will occupy in the list arranged ac¬ 
cording to the order of merit, or that now and then a man 
who is hardly qualified may pass by mere luck. But 
surely the many undeserved failures referred to cannot 
be explained in this way, unless we want to charge the 
examiners with utter imbecility. Partiality on the part 
of the gentlemen of whom the Boards of London and 
Edinburgh are composed is altogether out of the ques¬ 
tion. We are driven to seek an answer to our inquiry 
in the nature of the subjects on which a knowledge is 
demanded from our young men. 
I have already stated my opinion as to the relative 
value of different scientific subjects for the purposes of a 
chemist and druggist; and, as far as my experience goes, 
I can say that our young men share the views I have 
expressed, especially so with reference to botany. They 
feel that a subject is forced upon them which they regard 
as useless, and, with the exception of a few who take a 
special liking to it, they study it with reluctance. The 
result is, that they will not, as a rule, acquire much real 
knowledge of botany, and that a portion of their valu¬ 
able time is wasted which might be advantageously 
devoted to the important study of chemistry and materia 
inedica. But unfortunately botany is by no means the 
only unnecessary and undesirable topic required by our 
present examiners. A great deal of what they ask on 
the other subjects, and especially on pharmacy, deserves 
to be called worse than useless. The candidates are ex¬ 
pected to know by heart the component parts of com¬ 
pound powders, pills, confections, mixtures, and other 
preparations of the Pharmacopoeia, and to be able to 
mention the preparations for which any given substance, 
such as aloes, resina, acacia, and the like are used. The 
practical experience of men who have served behind the 
counter for many years will no doubt enable them to 
mention a good many such details, if at leisure for reflect¬ 
ing, but to recite them well in an examination, where the 
answers must be given as soon as the questions are asked, 
necessitates the learning off by heart of the greater part 
of the Pharmacopoeia, especially on the part of those 
who wish to pass before they have served as assistants. 
This is certainly not learning, but cramming; and the 
examiners who compel students to waste their time in 
such a manner incur the responsibility of encouraging 
1 that cramming process which is so distasteful to a think¬ 
ing and intelligent student. What can be the use of 
such knowledge, if knowledge it dare bo called F Are 
our assistants to make the compound preparations from 
memory without consulting the Pharmacopeia F 1 have, 
of course, nothing to say against candidates being re¬ 
quired to know the proportion of poisonous ingredients, 
such as opium, in preparations used internally (not in 
plasters, ointments, etc.). But the subjects above alluded 
to serve no practical purpose whatever; they are worked 
up by the student so that he may know them on the day 
of the examination, no matter how soon afterwards they 
are forgotten. From my own experience as a teacher, I 
can state that stupid and unreflecting pupils are most 
generally inclined and ready to get up this kind of 
knowledge which requires no thought, whilst intelligent 
students, who are eager to collect useful information and 
true lasting knowledge, dislike the practice of cramming. 
The remarks I have made on this point are applicable 
also to the custom of requiring our young men to recog¬ 
nize extracts and tinctures. The recognition of the 
former is, to a great extent, guesswork; and though a 
student may succeed, by several days’ practice, in know¬ 
ing, or rather in guessing most of the extracts of his own 
collection for the time being, he would fail to do so with 
the extracts belonging to somebody else. As to the 
tinctures, I admit that about two dozen of them can be 
recognized by their odour, but a cold may at any time 
deprive us of the sense of smell, and even without a cold 
the most experienced chemist may easily fail to recognize 
an important tincture if he is compelled to exert his 
nasal organ by smelling a number of strong tinctures in 
succession. Nothing of the kind is required in the Phar¬ 
maceutical Examinations on the Continent; and it seems 
most ridiculous that the success of our young men should 
be endangered or lessened by such an incident as a cold. 
The inability to recognize tinctures and extracts has 
proved fatal to many a student, especially at the Modi¬ 
fied examination, in which a candidate is not afforded 
the chance of showing his scientific attainments, though 
they may be more than sufficient for the Major, as the 
very subjects against which I have so strongly protested 
form the principal requirements of the Modified exami¬ 
nation. In the Minor examination there is some chance 
for the candidates to make up for their apparent defi¬ 
ciency by a display of real scientific knowledge ; though 
even in this examination cases have occurred in which 
such attainments, great though these were, have not 
saved them from the fatal consequences ot their short¬ 
comings in cramming, guessing and smelling. I under¬ 
stand that the composition of the compound preparations 
of the Pharmacopoeia, and the recognition of tinctures 
and extracts, have not been so much insisted upon 
within the last twelve months as formerly, and that 
candidates who fail in those subjects may yet pass the 
Minor examination, but they must look for their names 
at the bottom of the list. That, gentlemen, is no im¬ 
provement at all. The most skilful dispenser, provided 
with more than ample knowledge on chemistry and 
materia medica, will still fail in the Modified, Minor or 
Major examination if he has not made himseli acquainted 
with those subjects, which an unbiassed man must ad- 
