IX ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 2-15 



took a gold medal or won a prize certificate. This 

 is one great truth respecting medical education. 

 Another is, that all practice in medicine is based 

 upon theory of some sort or other; and there- 

 fore, that it is desirable to have such theory 

 in the closest possible accordance with fact. The 

 veriest empiric who gives a drug in one case be- 

 cause he has seen it do good in another of 

 apparently the same sort, acts upon the theory 

 that similarity of superficial symptoms means 

 similarity of lesions; which, by the way, is per- 

 haps as wild an hypothesis as could be invented. 

 To understand the nature of disease we must 

 understand health, and the understanding of the 

 healthy body means the having a knowledge of 

 its structure and of the way in which its manifold 

 actions are performed, which is what is technically 

 termed human anatomy and human physiology. 

 The physiologist again must needs possess an 

 acquaintance with physics and chemistry, inas- 

 much as physiology is, to a great extent, applied 

 physics and chemistry. For ordinary purposes a 

 limited amount of such knowledge is all that is 

 needful; but for the pursuit of the higher 

 branches of physiology no knowledge of these 

 branches of science can be^ too extensive, or too 

 profound. Again, what we call therapeutics, 

 which has to do with the action of drugs and 

 medicines on the living organism, is, strictly 

 speaking, a branch of experimental physiology. 



