88 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



medicine, is not too much to exact of a student who aspires to be a 

 physician worthy of our times and of the degree of our universities. 

 First hand knowledge of real things should be the key-note of all 

 scientific instruction. " Far more effort is now made," writes a corre- 

 spondent, " in both the preparatory and the clinical branches to give 

 the student a first hand knowledge of the subject. This tendency has 

 still a long way to travel before it is in danger of being overdone. The 

 practical result of this tendency is that the cost of education per 

 student is greatly increased and the profits of purely commercial 

 schools are thereby threatened. This forms, doubtless, the main source 

 of the objection made by the weaker and less worthy schools to better 

 methods of instruction. We need well endowed schools of medicine 

 that may carry on their work unhampered by the necessities of a com- 

 mercial venture. Medical schools now exist in great numbers, — many 

 of them can not keep up with modern requirements, and necessarily 

 their salvation lies in antagonizing everything in the nature of more 

 ample and more expensive training." 



Another correspondent writes, emphasizing the value of biologic 

 studies : " The final comprehension of bodily activity in health and 

 disease depends on knowledge of living things from ovum to birth, 

 from birth to maturity, and from maturity to old age and death. Any- 

 thing less than such fundamental knowledge requires constant guess- 

 ing to fill up the gaps, and guesses are nearly always wrong." 



In many regards, even our best schools of medicine seem to show seri- 

 ous deficiencies. The teaching of anatomy is still one of the most costly, 

 as well as least satisfactory, of our lines of work. A correspondent 

 calls attention to the fact that in making anatomy e practical ' in our 

 medical schools ' we expended last year $750,000 in the United States, 

 twice the amount expended in Germany, with as a result neither prac- 

 tical anatomy nor scientific achievement.' "Anatomy," he continues, 

 " should be made distinctly a university department, on a basis similar 

 to that of physics and chemistry. Unfortunately, university presidents 

 still stand much in the way of the development of anatomy, for many 

 of them seem to think that almost any one who wears the gown is 

 good enough to become a professor of anatomy. Repeatedly have I 

 witnessed the appointment of a know-nothing when a recognized young 

 man might have been had for half the money." Our forces are dissi- 

 pated, the fear of things scientific has destroyed even the practical in 

 this noble old mother science which is still giving birth to new sciences 

 and to brilliant discoveries. 



Among other matters too much neglected are personal hygiene, a 

 matter to which the physician of the past has been notoriously and 

 joyously indifferent. Especially is this true as regards the hygiene 

 of exercise and the misuse of nerve-affecting drugs. 



Public sanitation as well deserves more attention. " The demand 

 for adequately trained officers of public health is not what it should be, 



