244 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



before the class a few birds, some insects, a fish, some frogs, and a 

 few tadpoles. The remainder of the term was spent in studying com- 

 parative physiology and anatomy. I followed out this course, with 

 few modifications, with a number of classes, and never failed to inter- 

 est them. There was but little attention paid to the nervous system, 

 as I considered it too abstruse for the students. I will say, however, 

 that, after spending some little time on the brain and spinal column of 

 a cat and dog, a few of the pupils of their own accord worked out the 

 nervous system of a crawfish in quite an admirable manner. The 

 work done was, of course, far from thorough, and will bear no com- 

 parison to that performed in more pretentious institutions : it will be 

 remembered that I was working under a school system which does not 

 require physiology to be taught, that I had nothing to work with ex- 

 cept what I myself furnished, and that, worse than all, I had a tre- 

 mendous prejudice to combat. 



Whether I was successful or not may be judged by the fact that 

 some members of the class who went over the ground in this way now 

 occupy their spare time in summer in making collections of the flora 

 and fauna in their vicinity. I further noticed that in Latin and math- 

 ematics those pupils who were most interested in physiology were 

 quicker and clearer observers, more accurate reasoners, and more just 

 and keen in their criticisms, than those of equal caliber who had not 

 taken the course. 



I give this experience for what it is worth, hoping that, if it meets 

 the eye of one teacher who has a class in physiology, and is teaching 

 by the old method of exclusiveness, he will try the process above de- 

 scribed (which is far from original), confident that he will meet with 

 success beyond his most sanguine expectations. 



-*- 



DISEASE-GERMS. 



By Br. WILLIAM B. CAEPENTEE. 



AMONG the distinguished men who came together at the recent 

 International Medical Congress a gathering altogether unex- 

 ampled for its combination of great and varied ability, and worthily 

 representative of almost every country in which medicine is studied 

 there was no one whose presence was more universally or more cor- 

 dially welcomed than a quiet-looking Frenchman, who is neither a 

 great physician nor a great surgeon nor even a great physiologist, but 

 who, originally a chemist, has done more for medical science than any 

 savant of his day ; and this, not only (probably not so much) through 

 the results already attained by Pasteur himself and by others working 

 on his ideas great though these results are but through the entirely 



