672 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



of pupils from schools duly accredited as providing satisfactory 

 instruction. If during a series of years the pupils from a 

 particular school prove to be unsatisfactory students, the school 

 is struck off the list. A system of this kind would make it 

 possible to bring about the necessary changes in our school 

 system within a very few years — if they entered into the work 

 in the right spirit, University teachers would be able to give 

 advice and assistance to the teachers in the schools which would 

 make it easy for them to improve their teaching. A new spirit 

 of co-operation would be introduced which could not fail to 

 have far-reaching consequences. No headquarters machinery 

 will effect the object I have in view. 



Dr. Wade has spoken of the time devoted to preliminary 

 medical studies, especially chemistry — he says, the work cannot 

 be done in less time than is devoted to it at present and more 

 it is impossible to give. The question is one for the future 

 to decide. In my opinion — and I speak from considerable 

 experience — it is undesirable to keep boys and girls at school 

 much beyond sixteen years of age, certainly not beyond 

 seventeen ; after this age, they lapse into unsystematic if not 

 irregular habits and are subjected to a discipline unsuited to 

 their years. All further education should be carried on at a 

 place of higher education, under more elastic conditions than 

 school affords and more in sight of the world ; under conditions 

 likely to develop independence of character and individuality. 

 On the other hand, it is undesirable, as a rule, that a student 

 should take up serious clinical work under hospital conditions 

 before he is one- or two-and-twenty years of age — the strain is 

 too severe for younger men and the necessary maturity of 

 judgment is rarely developed at an earlier age. From sixteen 

 or seventeen at latest to one- or two-and-twenty should be a 

 period of sufficient length, under proper conditions, for the 

 mastery of the various subjects comprised in the curriculum, 

 short of the purely technical stage. More time could well be 

 found for chemistry than is now given to the subject and as 

 the medical man is, in large measure, a practising chemist, it 

 will come to be recognised, I believe, that he must acquire a 

 sound working knowledge of the subject. Let me add that 

 I would make literary training an important element in the 

 curriculum 



