IX ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 251 



very well. It allows the student to concentrate 

 his mind upon what he is about for the time being, 

 and then to dismiss it. Those who are occupied 

 in intellectual work, will, I think, agree with me 

 that it is important, not so much to know a thing, 

 as to have known it, and known it thoroughly. 

 If you have once known a thing in this way it is 

 easy to renew your knowledge when you have 

 forgotten it; and when you begin to take the sub- 

 ject up again, it slides back upon the familiar 

 grooves with great facility. 



Lastly comes the question as to how the uni- 

 versity may co-operate in advancing medical edu- 

 cation. A medical school is strictly a technical 

 school — a school in which a practical profession is 

 taught — while a university ought to be a place in 

 which knowledge is obtained without direct refer- 

 ence to professional purposes. It is clear, there- 

 fore, that a university and its antecedent, the 

 school, may best co-operate with the medical 

 school by making due provision for the study of 

 those branches of knowledge which lie at the 

 foundation of medicine. 



At present, young men come to the medical 

 schools without a conception of even the elements 

 of physical science; they l^arn, for the first time, 

 that there are such sciences as physics, chemistry, 

 and physiology, and are introduced to anatomy as 

 a new thing. It may be safely said that, with a 

 large proportion of medical students, much of the 



