Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery; Exam Paper, Spoof

Subjects:

Universities, Education, Medical Practitioners, Anatomy, Chemistry, Natural Philosophy, Animal Behaviour, Periodicals, Pharmaceuticals

Institutions mentioned:

Society of Apothecaries—Apothecaries' Hall , Surrey Zoological Gardens

Publications cited:

Bell 1833

    Greets the University of London's first examination for the Bachelor of Medicine degree. Thinks the university will now acquire all the other attributes of colleges in the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, including steeple-chases in the vicinity of the Birmingham railway. Criticising the press for not 'more explicitly defining the questions proposed for the examinations', Punch presents 'an exact copy of the questions' to illustrate the high position that 'medical knowledge has attained in the country'. The examination questions draw on students' knowledge of the more trivial aspects of medical training. For instance, students are asked to compare the circulation of the blood and that of the Lancet and Medical Gazette in the hospitals, to say which is the most powerful narcotic: 'opium, henbane, or a lecture upon practice of physic', and to identify the 'most liberal pawnbrokers in the neighbourhood of Guy's and Bartholomew's'.