35^  Examinations  by  Boards  of  Pharmacy \Km-j^^™m' 
With  many  of  the  Boards  the  questions  asked  are  never  pub.- 
iished,  and  the  candidate  has  no  method  of  knowing  how  many  of 
the  questions  have  been  satisfactorily  answered.  With  some  of  the 
Boards,  one  set  of  questions  serves  for  all  of  the  candidates ;  if  a 
certain  proportion  of  the  questions  are  answered,  he  can  reach  the 
mark  set  for  assistants ;  if  a  larger  quantity  of  the  same  questions 
are  properly  answered,  he  is  entitled  to  rank  as  a  proprietor. 
Whether  this  method  of  determining  a  man's  fitness  has  the  only 
merit  of  economy,  must  be  a  matter  of  individual  opinion.  The 
writer  has  carefully  examined  many  of  the  Boards  of  Pharmacy 
questions  that  have  been  published,  and  it  must  be  said  that  the 
questions  have  mainly  followed  the  methods  adopted  by  the  colleges 
of  pharmacy  ;  a  number  of  the  questions  being  recognized  as  having 
done  duty  before  at  a  college  examination.  There  cannot  be  any 
great  objection  to  this,  provided  the  questions  selected  are  suitable  ; 
and  this  brings  up  the  main  question,  what  is  a  suitable  question  to 
give  a  candidate? 
In  the  writer's  opinion,  the  questions  should  be  graded.  To  the 
candidate  for  the  assistant's  certificate,  the  questions  should  be 
mainly  directed  towards  proving  whether  he  is  a  safe  person  to  be 
left  in  charge  of  the  store  during  the  temporary  absence  of  the  pro- 
prietor ;  for  the  certificate  that  he  is  given  qualifies  him  in  this 
respect.  There  are  many  questions  which  would  be  perfectly  proper 
to  give  a  junior  student  at  a  pharmaceutical  college  that  are  theo 
retical,  and  which  presuppose  him  to  have  a  knowledge  of  physics, 
mathematics  or  chemical  reactions;  for  the  junior  student  has  just 
listened  to  lectures  treating  of  these  subjects  and  the  college  exam- 
ination is  for  the  purpose  of  showing  how  much  of  the  lecture  or 
instruction  has  been  retained.  But,  many  of  these  questions  would 
be  totally  unfit  to  give  a  candidate  for  the  assistant's  certificate. 
The  College  as  an  institution  has  the  right  to  ask  of  her  students  a 
certain  grade  of  accomplishments,  based  upon  the  instruction  given, 
before  permitting  the  student  to  pass  to  a  higher  class ;  a  grounding 
in  elementary  physics  and  botany,  and  pharmaceutical  mathe- 
matics is  essential  in  order  to  thoroughly  comprehend  the  subjects 
which  are  to  follow.  But  the  questions  which  should  be  given  to 
candidates  for  the  assistant's  certificate  should  be  eminently  prac- 
tical. The  doses  of  poisonous  remedies,  and  indeed  of  all  remedies, 
should  form  a  prominent  part  of  the  examination.    The  relative 
