308 OX MEDICAL EDUCATION xii 



about the defects of one's friends, I must beg you 

 to disabuse vour minds of the notion that I am 

 alluding to any particular school, or to any par- 

 ticular college, or to any particular person; and 

 to believe that if I am silent when I should be 

 glad to speak with high praise, it is because that 

 praise would come too close to this locality. What 

 has struck me, then, in this long experience of 

 the men best instructed in physiology from the 

 medical schools of London is (with the many and 

 brilliant exceptions to which I have referred), 

 taking it as a whole, and broadly, the singular 

 unreality of their knowledge of physiology. Xow, 

 I use that word "unreality" advisedly: I do not 

 say " scanty; " on the contrary, there is plenty of 

 it — a great deal too much of it — but it is the qual- 

 ity, the nature of the knowledge, which I quarrel 

 with. I know I used to have — I don't know 

 whether I have now, but I had once upon a time — 

 a had reputation among students for setting up a 

 very high standard of acquirement, and I dare say 

 you may think that the standard of this old exam- 

 iner, who happily is now very nearly an extinct 

 examiner, has been pitched too high. Xothing of 

 the kind, T assure you. The defects I have no- 

 ticed, and the faults I have to find, arise entirely 

 from the circumstance that my standard is pitched 

 too low. This is no paradox, gentlemen, but quite 

 simply the fact. The knowledge I have looked 

 for was a real, precise, thorough, and practical 



