A Respectable Occupation: - University of Hertfordshire Research ...

liquids. They had to show that they were capable of making liniments,
lotions, mixtures, ointments, plasters, powders, solutions and suppositories.
The Materia Medica paper required candidates to be able to recognise
any of the crude drugs included in the British Pharmacopoeia or on a list of
60 items of plant and animal origin. They also had to be able to name the
active ingredients they contained and the preparations in which they were
used. In Botany, a knowledge was required of 41 named medicinal plants.
Candidates had to be able to recognise them and discuss the internal
structure of roots, stems, bark and leaves down to the cellular level. They
had to be able to name leaf shapes and their arrangement on the stem, and
understand the physiology and reproduction of plants. They had to be able
to differentiate between monocotyledons, dicotyledons, and cryptogamic
plants by the microscopic examination of sections of their stems.
The chemistry and physics paper required a knowledge of the under
lying laws: those of conservation of energy, of gravitation, Charles‘s law and
Boyle‘s law. An understanding was needed of the use and principles behind
such instruments as the balance, thermometer and barometer. Candidates
needed to know about chemical reactions, about atoms and molecules and
atomic and molecular weights, chemical formulae, valency and Avogadro‘s
Hypothesis. A knowledge was required of the non-metallic elements and
their compounds, the methods by which they are prepared and the typical
reactions they undergo. A similar understanding was required for the
metallic elements, how they are extracted, their characteristics and their
reactions. Organic chemistry was included in the syllabus and compounds
131