638 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. [February 3,1872. 
Camspttea 
*** A To 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. 
Pharmaceutical Examination. 
Sir,—"Will you kindly permit me to reply to tlie comments 
■which your correspondent, Mr. Benjamin Keen, lias made 
upon my lecture. Mr. K. begins by stating that my lecture 
abounds with absurdities and inaccuracies, but he makes no 
attempt whatever to prove his assertion; and all he has to 
say against my statements is, that he, for one, thinks other¬ 
wise, or that he, for one, would be sorry to agree with me. 
I do not know Mr. Benjamin Keen, and cannot tell how far 
the opinion of your readers may be impressed by the mere 
fact that he, for one, thinks so or so; but I am quite sure 
that the use of such terms as “absurdities” and “inaccura¬ 
cies,” unless supported by a very different kind of argument, 
reflects little credit on their author. In alluding to m 3 r 
remarks on practical pharmacy, Mr. K. complains that I 
ignore the B. P. altogether, and he therefore considers them 
as so absurd as to be almost beneath one’s notice. That my 
remarks on practical pharmacy have really been quite be¬ 
neath his notice is very evident, for if he had but read them 
he would have found that I recommend the B. P. to the 
student as the text-book on that subject. 
There is only one single point on which Mr. K. ventures 
to argue. He endeavours to show that the study of the 
science of botany is necessary for a chemist and druggist, as 
without it he would not be able to understand one-half the 
definitions of materia medica in the B. P.,—such as “ pellu- 
. cid dots” or “ indentations ” in the description of Pol. Buchu. 
Does your correspondent really mean to assert that, without 
having studied botany, he would not have understood the 
meaning of the terms quoted? He distinctly says so, and I, 
for one, have no desire to charge him with inaccuracy. He 
might have selected better instances, and named terms which 
are not known to every schoolboy, and which cannot be 
found in an ordinary dictionary; but even such cases would 
not prove anything, as reference to a botanical glossary 
would suffice to help a student of materia medica over the 
difficulty. 
I must decline to defend myself against the charge of in¬ 
competency as a teacher of pharmacy, to which Mr. K. is 
inclined to attribute the failures alluded to in my lecture. 
As to the remark of Professor Attfield, cited by your corre¬ 
spondent, I wish to say that distinguished lecturer's state¬ 
ment can only refer to his laboratorv students and their 
examinations in chemistry. I never maintained that well- 
instructed students of chemistry were likely to fail in the 
chemical part of their examinations ; and any one who will 
take the trouble of reading the report of my lectui’e will 
find that I have expressed myself strongly in favour of a 
thoroughly sound education and examination in pharmaceu¬ 
tical chemistry and materia medica. 
I shall gladly reply to any comments upon my lecture 
which are supported by arguments, but I must decline to 
take any further notice of remarks such as Mr. Benjamin 
Keen has thought fit to make. 
225, Oxford Street, Manchester , Louis Siebold. 
January 30th, 1872. 
Sjr,—Manchester has an unenviable reputation in matters 
political, and it Mr. Siebold ’3 exposition of educational 
opinions be that of the majority of his fellow-citizens, they 
deserve the obnoxious epithet of pharmaceutical “ reaction- 
naires.” The most striking answer to Mr. Siebold’s com¬ 
plaints occurs on the same page of the Journal in which his 
lecture is printed. There are enumerated the questions 
which constitute the Preliminary examination of the Phar¬ 
maceutical Society, and only 58 per cent, of the number 
of candidates satisfied the Examiners. A lower third-form 
boy in any public school passes a considerably stiffer exami¬ 
nation than this every three months. The two most important 
preliminary studies, and the most useful in rendering intelli¬ 
gible the rudiments of chemistry are here conspicuous for 
their absence,—I mean geometry and algebra. No wonder 
so few succeed in passing the Major and Minor. How is a stu¬ 
dent to understand the principles of crystallography who has 
never opened a Euclid? How is he to work out a chemical 
equation, if ignorant of the simplest rules of algebra ? What 
do such words as hydrogen, polybasic, perigynous, etc. mean 
to him, if he has no acquaintance with Greek roots? empty 
sounds conveying no meaning to his understanding ; so every¬ 
thing he learns is, to him, one continual cram and jumble of 
formula?, hard words and incomprehensible technicalities. 
No man who has not mastered the first few books of Euclid and 
simple equations in algebra, is capable of appreciating the 
theory of the poly-atomicity of the elements, their com¬ 
binations and substitutions, without indicting a series of 
violent wrenches on his mental faculties. He is compelled to- 
accept a number of doctrinal laws and facts which he cannot 
intuitively understand, and this constitutes a cram of the very 
worst description. Thus we find that in the last Minor ex¬ 
amination, held in London, only twelve passed out of twenty- 
five, and out of three candidates for the Major, only one 
passed. 
Formerly, when the examinations were purely voluntary, 
the proportion of rejected candidates was much less ; not that 
the examinations are at all more difficult than they were five 
or six years ago, for, on the contrary, a somewhat higher 
theoretical standard of knowledge was required then, but be¬ 
cause all young men of good education were desirous of emu¬ 
lating each other in earning a distinctive title above their 
fellows; and by a process of natural selection, none but really 
well-educated and capable students volunteered to undergo 
the ordeal of examinations. 
In various quarters an outcry is raised against the study of 
botany, coupled with a florid eulogium on the advantages of 
a profound acquaintance with materia medica. What is the 
study of materia medica but a one-sided excrescence of bo¬ 
tany? What mental satisfaction is there in recognizing the 
quality of a piece of jalap, if we did not know something of 
the difference between roots, tubers, stems, etc.; the formation 
of woody tissue, the habits of the plant, its Natural Order 
and its likeness to our common convolvulus ? To know all 
this, we must learn something of botany, of the cellular con¬ 
struction of plants, their organs of nutrition and reproduc¬ 
tion, and a thousand other minute characteristics. 
The conversion of Bloomsbury Square into a botanic garden 
would, without interfering with j.ts existing object, confer 
such a boon on pharmaceutical students, that few would ever 
fail in that department of their studies. Most Continental 
schools of pharmacy have gardens attached, which are free to 
all students and not jealously guarded for a select few, as the 
admissions to those in Regent’s Park are here. If better op¬ 
portunities existed for students to make themselves acquainted 
with the characteristics of medicinal plants, than is afforded 
by musty specimens and dogs’-eared plates, the study would 
find many more loving disciples than it now boasts of. A few 
beds planted with our native herbs, and relieved by a few 
subtropical and brightly-coloured plants or shrubs, such as- 
the castor-oil palm, the Iris grandifolia, etc., would not only 
be an invaluable aid to the study of medical botany, but would 
gratify the eyes of the inhabitants of the square, and be a re¬ 
lief to the dingy grass and smoky foliage of the half-dozen, 
plane-trees that cumber the ground. 
I think that if our pharmacies were inspected annually, as- 
in Prussia, and fines inilicted on those who neglected to renew 
their annual stock of indigenous herbs, roots, fruits, seeds 
and leaves, the study of botany would not find so many de¬ 
tractors. It is quite as essential to the technical education 
of the pharmacist as chemistry; we seldom make our own. 
chemicals, yet no one disputes the necessity of learning that,. 
—and how many country chemists there ere who prepare 
their own liquor taraxaci, their syrups of violets, of red poppies 
and not a few green extracts. Those, too, who have gardens 
can have the satisfaction of growing their own medicinal 
herbs,—a shady corner sheltering a luxuriantly handsome 
belladonna shrub, an unsightly dung-heap covered and orna- 
1 mented by the large white fiowers of stramonium, with its 
curious prickly fruit, and a border of biennial henbane with, 
its delicately-veined petals. 
In most Continental schools of pharmacy, mineralogy, geo¬ 
logy and zoology are taught, and surely it behoves a che¬ 
mist to know something of the nature and composition of the 
ground he walks on, and even to turn his knowledge to good 
account; for if by hazard, he could devise a process “ tant 
soit pen” economical for separating the potash from the 
silica, of which granitic rocks are formed, not only would a 
j colossal fortune be his, but he would confer an everlasting 
benefit on mankind. 
The preliminary test of a man’s intellectual capability 
