638 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



students, and with the steady advance in scientific method such 

 progress must inevitably continue. 



How, then, should chemistry be taught to medical students in 

 order to ensure the best possible knowledge for future applica- 

 tion ? In every science there are certain fundamental principles 

 which underlie all its branches and must be mastered before any 

 of its applications can be appreciated. The ordinary laws of 

 leverage are the same for the engineering student who after- 

 wards applies them in constructing cranes and bridges as for 

 the surgeon who employs them for studying the localities of 

 greatest strain in bones, and the conditions under which they 

 are most liable to be broken. The medical student and the 

 embryo analyst or chemical manufacturer must alike be familiar 

 with such fundamental principles as the neutralisation of acids 

 by bases, oxidation and reduction, and the laws of chemical 

 combination ; and with those simple typical carbon compounds 

 which by their coalescence or modification lead to such diverse 

 products as the complex aniline dyes on the one hand and the 

 constituents of foodstuffs on the other. This is the legitimate 

 domain of the chemist, and no one who is not engaged in 

 the furtherance of chemistry can possibly keep before him 

 with that vividness which is essential to effective teaching 

 the conditions which define and limit the existence and trans- 

 formations of such bodies. 



But after this common elementary part has been mastered 

 the paths of the various classes of students diverge widely. 

 The teachers of chemistry in medical schools have been accused 

 of desiring to turn their pupils into chemists. The mere utter- 

 ance of this accusation is sufficient proof of the inability of 

 those responsible for it to comprehend the problem ; the thing 

 is impossible, the idea ludicrous. Chemistry is too vast a 

 subject to allow more than the fringe of it to be mastered by 

 a student who is not making it his lifework. The aim of the 

 medical teacher is, and can only be, once the common elementary 

 stage is passed, to limit the student in the very manner which 

 Prof. Armstrong proposes as a novelty — namely, to those 

 parts of the subject which have a practical bearing on his 

 subsequent work. 



But even supposing that Dr. Armstrong's contentions were 

 correct at the present day, and the methods of teaching chemistry 

 were in the deplorable state he hints at, what are the remedies 



