THE REFORM OF THE MEDICAL CURRICULUM 545 



years it has been my good fortune to see my eldest son — as well 

 as a number of my own pupils — engage in the study of the action 

 of enzymes ; in fact, I educated him to that end, feeling that the 

 physiological field is that which offers to the investigator most 

 real plums and nuts sweet to eat when cracked — the field in 

 which work of the highest public importance is to be done, 

 especially in connexion with the many intricate problems which 

 the study of food presents. Another son, who has passed 

 recently through the first three years of the medical course at 

 Cambridge, has brought me into close touch with the latest 

 developments of the curriculum of preliminary medical studies. 

 I have some idea, therefore, both of the possibilities and the 

 requirements. Moreover, I am not thinking of the subject for 

 the first time: as far back as 1885, in my address at Aberdeen 

 as President of the Chemical Section of the British Associa- 

 tion, I gave utterance to the following opinion, based on the 

 experience which I had had in a medical school : — 



" We may also hope that it will be possible ere long to teach 

 Chemistry properly to medical students. Seeing that the practice 

 of medical men largely consists in pouring chemicals into that 

 delicately organised vessel the human body ; that the chemical 

 changes which thereupon take place or which normally and 

 abnormally occur in it are certainly not more simple than those 

 which take place in ordinary inert vessels in our laboratories, 

 the necessity for the medical man to have a knowledge of 

 chemistry — and that no slight one — would appear to ordinary 

 minds to stand to reason : and that such is not generally 

 acknowledged to be the case can only be accounted for by 

 the fact that they have never yet been taught chemistry ; that 

 the apology for chemistry which has been forced upon them 

 has been found to be of next to no value. No proof is required 

 that the student has ever performed a single quantitative exer- 

 cise : and I have no hesitation in saying that the examinations 

 in so-called practical chemistry, even at the London University, 

 are beneath contempt : after more than a dozen years' experience 

 as a teacher under the system, I can affirm that the knowledge 

 gained is of no permanent value and the educational discipline 

 nil. Here the reform must be effected by the examining boards : 

 it is for them to insist upon a satisfactory preliminary training 

 and they must so order their demands as to enforce a proper 

 system of practical teaching ; and if chemistry is to be of real 



