Tin UNIVERSITIES: ACTUAL AND IDEAL 219 



jcction, wliich takes the general form of the re- 

 proach that, in thus limiting the curriculum, we 

 are seeking to narrow it. We are told that the 

 medical man ought to be a person of good educa- 

 tion and general information, if his profession is 

 to hold its own among other professions; that he 

 ought to know Botany, or else, if he goes abroad, 

 he will not be able to tell poisonous fruits from 

 edible ones; that he ought to know drugs, as a 

 druggist knows them, or he will not be able to tell 

 sham bark and senna from the real articles; that 

 he ought to know Zoology, because — well, I really 

 have never been able to learn exactly why he is to 

 be expected to know zoology. There is, indeed, 

 a popular superstition, that doctors know all about 

 things that are queer or nasty to the general mind, 

 and may, therefore, be reasonably expected to 

 know the " barbarous binomials " applicable to 

 snakes, snails, and slugs; an amount of informa- 

 tion with which the general mind is usally com- 

 pletely satisfied. And there is a scientific super- 

 stition that Physiology is largely aided by Com- 

 parative Anatomy — a superstition which, like 

 most superstitions, once had a grain of truth at 

 bottom; but the grain has become homoeopathic, 

 since Physiology took its modern experimental de- 

 velopment, and became what it is now, the appli- 

 cation of the principles of Physics and Chemistry 

 to the elucidation of the phenomena of life. 



I hold as strongly as any one can do, that the 



