THE REFORM OF THE MEDICAL CURRICULUM 655 



situation. But a few months after I commenced to breathe an 

 atmosphere of apomorphine l at St. Bartholomew's Hospital 

 Medical School in 1870, my chief Matthiessen came to an 

 untimely end. I discovered him, one afternoon, asleep for ever, 

 in his armchair : my first experience of real life— in itself an 

 event to make a young man think. Had he lived, Barts might 

 well have been made the centre of research on alkaloids and 

 their use in medicine, a centre of inspiration— as he was a 

 man of indomitable energy, full of scientific enthusiasm, with 

 an extraordinary faculty of choosing workers and making them 

 work ; he had too the gift of insight and was interested in 

 things organic and inorganic ; in fact, he was a complete chemist 

 in feeling : one who could determine electrical conductivities 

 without lapsing into ionomania and who would have set his face 

 against unreal, pretentious talk on the subject. His work on 

 narcotine with Carey Foster and Alder Wright practically laid 

 the foundations of alkaloidal chemistry. Whenever a chance 

 comes to us in this country, however, we seem to let it lapse : 

 lack of scientific training and of the scientific spirit has led the 

 medical profession to overlook the advantages accruing from 

 systematic research work, and the development of a narrow 

 humanitarian spirit among the public now threatens to put a 

 complete stop to such work in medical schools, as the hospitals 

 are held to exist solely for the cure of poor patients : the 

 number of persons, poor and rich, is in no way thought of who 

 die lingering deaths .because of our neglect to carry on 

 systematic inquiry in directions likely to be of benefit to 

 medicine. The chance once in the hands of Barts, thoughtlessly 

 sacrificed, will not soon occur again, I fear. 



In my former article, I spoke of a just feeling among medical 

 men " that the present course in chemistry is a totally unfit 

 preparation for medical practice " — and added : " this is the 

 feeling we have to meet and provide for." Dr. Wade notwith- 

 standing, I still affirm this to be the case, and I have reason to 

 think that the teaching of other preliminary subjects is more 

 or less open to similar criticism. 



He has represented me as having made "an attack" on the 

 curriculum of the University of London — in reality, my remarks 



1 Apomorphine was then under investigation and was in the air in more senses 

 than one. 



