the same time, has prepared the student to grasp the principles to be 

 illustrated by the more complicated experiments and perhaps also 

 made it unneccessary for the student himself to perform the many 

 simple experiments to which he is equal, but which can be more 

 quickly performed for him. For we must keep in mind that as Pro- 

 fessor Welch has said, "Laboratory methods are extremely time-taking 

 and are not adapted to teach the whole contents of any of the medical 

 sciences." I need not recount the list of practicable class demonstra- 

 tions. There is hardly a drug of importance for which a good demon- 

 stration is not to be found in the various scientific journals. We know 

 that the list of drugs in actual use is very large, but if we ask what are 

 those that have been found to be really indispensable to the surgeon, 

 the gynecologist and obstetrician, the internist, the ophthalmologist, 

 dermatologist and other specialists, we can easily reduce our por- 

 tentous list to some fifty instances. Let these constitute the basis of 

 instruction and serve as types; take these up in great detail, and when- 

 ever possible connect with them less important ones of similar action. 



But to assist the student to master the contents of his particular sub- 

 ject should not be the only aim of the medical teacher; he should seek 

 to arouse an appetite for all that is fundamental in the science of 

 medicine; he should stimulate to inquiry, to a searching and logical 

 analysis of the phenomena to be grappled with, be it in the laboratory 

 or at the bedside. And in striving to carry out this high purpose, his 

 own life work, his spoken words and his attitude toward his pupils 

 are his chief means of influence. 



I have thus far said nothing on the subject of Materia Medica. I do 

 not believe that special instruction in this branch is called for. In 

 the day when the student to the medical school entered with little 

 knowledge of chemistry, botany, and other sciences, it may have been 

 ^vell enough to give special courses on the physical, chemical, and 

 botanical characteristics of drugs, but the result in general was to 

 overburden the student's mind with a multitude of dry details of 

 interest or value solely to the pharmacist or to the student of pharma- 

 cognosy. When I began to teach pharmacology ten years ago, I dis- 

 carded all separate instruction in materia medica. My plan has been 

 to give only those points which are of actual importance to the stu- 

 dent of medicine or which he ought to know for historical reasons. 

 The drugs and preparations which are discussed in lectures and recita- 

 tions are placed on a table where all may examine them, and the more 

 important ones are passed from hand to hand while they are being 

 described. In speaking, for example, of rhubarb, digitalis, cinchona, 



67 



