THE PRESENT ASPECT OF MEDICAL EDUCATION. 589 



railroad employes and their families in sickness or grave infirmities, or 

 wounds entailing incapacity for work, old age, death, and the promo- 

 tion of culture and habits of thrift and industry. Many of these so- 

 cieties reach further than mere relief, and provide for the moral and 

 intellectual training and entertainment of their members and their 

 children ; aid them in acquiring and embellishing properties, and ex- 

 ercising a controlling influence in the councils of the nation in all 

 matters of legislation affecting the working-men ; they have elevated 

 their members' conditions from servitude and poverty to independence 

 and prosperity, and in other ways have exercised a paternal care and 

 supervision over their interests. Early recognizing in such societies 

 an agency potent to improve alike the secular estate and the moral, 

 physical, and intellectual condition of their employes, and also under- 

 standing that easy circumstances and contentment develop increased 

 usefulness in all walks of life in none more so than in railroad serv- 

 ice the English railways, by liberal and judicious encouragement of 

 such enterprises, have practically relieved themselves from many oner- 

 ous burdens under which nearly all our companies are still suffering. 



[To be continued.] 



++ 



THE PRESENT ASPECT OF MEDICAL EDUCATION. 



Br WILLIAM GILMAN THOMPSON, M. D. 



THERE is no branch of education which attracts so little public 

 interest and support as proper medical instruction, yet no one 

 would gainsay the necessity that, if there are to be physicians at all, 

 the community should be guaranteed that they have been most thor- 

 oughly trained. 



It is not so very long since an air of mystery, which no laymen 

 would attempt to penetrate, enveloped the art of medicine. It re- 

 quired generations to separate medical practice from alchemy, as- 

 trology, and the search for the elixir of life. The traditions and 

 influence of Hippocrates and of Sydenham lasted well into the past 

 century, and down to 1750 almost all of the scanty medical literature 

 was in Latin, and the gradually accumulating facts of observation 

 were still too little systemized to be weaned from an admixture of the 

 most unreasonable speculation and pseudo-philosophic discussion. As 

 late as 1784 the condition of medical education in the United States 

 was most rudimentary, and for some time thereafter dissections of the 

 human body could only be made by stealth.* The functions of physi- 

 cian, nurse, apothecary,f and often, too, of pastor, farmer, dentist, and 



* See McMaster's "History of the People of the United States," vol. i, pp. 27-31. 

 f " Life of Dr. John Warren," p. 314. 



