642 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



allotted to the various parts of the curriculum. One need hardly 

 discuss seriously the views of those extremists who advocate 

 the relegation of the preliminary sciences to the ordinary school 

 curriculum, and who hold that a medical student should have 

 completed his study of chemistry, physics, and biology before 

 entering upon his medical course. It is questionable, indeed, 

 whether the average schoolboy will ever be capable of specialising 

 to this extent ; in the present state of the teaching of science in 

 the ordinary schools, in which it is too often classed as a mere 

 subsidiary subject, this is certainly impossible, whatever it may 

 be in the future. Whether this is but a temporary phase in 

 the development of the subject is an open question ; but it is 

 significant that many teachers find students who have " learned 

 science at school " far more difficult to deal with than those who 

 have confined themselves to the ordinary school curriculum. 

 School methods, in spite of the efforts of reformers, are still 

 essentially didactic, and it is to be feared that years must 

 elapse before the average schoolboy can be taught to disregard 

 authority and think for himself, without at the same time 

 upsetting the whole system of obedience and respect for 

 authority on which school discipline essentially depends. It 

 must be remembered, moreover, that the medical student usually 

 conforms to the biological or visualising rather than the mathe- 

 matical or idealising type of mind, and that his powers of 

 abstraction are therefore more or less latent at the time he 

 commences his medical studies ; these have to be developed 

 before progress can be made. 



Although the organisation of science teaching in the public 

 schools is steadily improving, the number of really efficient 

 pupils who enter directly at the London medical schools is as 

 yet extremely small. For the present, as Dr. Armstrong admits, 

 the medical curriculum must be framed on the assumption that 

 the student on commencing his course is for practical purposes 

 ignorant of the preliminary sciences. The Conjoint Examining 

 Board of the Royal Colleges has for some years past offered 

 every encouragement to students to work at these before 

 entering at a medical school, but although the standard is far 

 lower than that required by the Universities, the number of 

 those who take advantage of this opportunity is surprisingly 

 small. The fact is that the average parent does not decide as 

 to the future of his boy until he is about to leave school, and 



