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professional physiologist who is engaged in extending it — which 

 physiologists are hardly likely to admit. The system has, in 

 fact, been tried, and in both cases discarded as impracticable ; just 

 as the clinical teacher could no longer keep sufficiently in touch 

 with physiology to render him an efficient teacher of this 

 subject, so neither he nor the professional physiologist who 

 took his place could make an efficient teacher of chemistry ; in 

 both cases the necessary vividness was lost through lack of 

 circumstantial detail. 



There is no doubt that the majority of the clinical teachers 

 have less objection to the presence of physiologists in the 

 medical schools than of that of their colleagues the chemists. 

 The distinction probably arises from the fact that the majority 

 of professional physiologists — though there are some notable 

 exceptions — have been through the medical course, and are 

 qualified to practise medicine, whereas the majority of the 

 teachers of chemistry have been trained in pure science ; one 

 heard of no objection to chemistry in the days when it was 

 taught by medical men. It is comparatively few, however, who 

 after the seven years' training required to make an efficient 

 chemist are able to devote another four years or more to 

 obtaining a medical qualification, and those who do so naturally 

 find an outlet in applying their chemical knowledge to physio- 

 logical and pathological problems, rather than to those of pure 

 chemistry. But it is noteworthy that those who have done 

 this are emphatic in their condemnation of the proposal to 

 relegate the teaching of chemistry to medical men. Dr. F. G. 

 Hopkins, F.R.S., Reader in Chemical Physiology in the 

 University of Cambridge, in a letter to the writer expresses 

 himself as follows : 



" I feel strongly that a thorough training in the general 

 " principles of organic chemistry is a necessary antecedent to 

 " the study of physiological and pathological chemistry. It is 

 "certain, too, that efficient instruction in inorganic chemistry 

 " (of which subject the biological chemist is as a rule profoundly 

 " ignorant) should precede the organic, and that meanwhile 

 " (such is the urgent need of biology) as much physical chemistry 

 "should be imparted as possible. All this teaching should be 

 " in the hands of the pure chemist. As regards the amount of 

 " it which is necessary to prepare the medical student for a 

 "proper grasp of the facts of physiology, I am quite aware that 



