igii] Editorials i53 



keep in touch with a large clinical material, more varied and more 

 extensive than any one hospital can offer. 



The Situation is remarkable in that it shows that managers of 

 hospitals have come to a realization that the plant and money of 

 which they are trustees should have a wider appHcation than has 

 heretofore been considered as either wise or necessary. The act of 

 the managers of the Presbyterian Hospital in voluntarily offering a 

 medical school the facilities of its wards for Student teaching is a 

 recognition by men of affairs that the present Situation has become 

 educationally intolerable, and so will be of the greatest value in in- 

 fluencing other boards to an appreciation of the broader aspects of 

 their responsibilities to the patients under their care. (Columbia 

 University Quart erly, 191 1, xiii, p. 317.) 



The Trustees of Columbia University have performed a grace- 

 ful and appropriate act in designating the chief professorship of 

 physiology the Dalton professorship, in honor of John Call Dalton, 



M.D. Dr. Dalton entered the College of Physi- 

 ^ J!,. • ?^' cians and Surgeons as a lecturer at the Session of 



sorsnip of Physiology ° 



1854-55, and in the following year became the 

 professor of physiology and microscopic anatomy, A graduate in 

 arts and medicine of Harvard, he had obtained his special training 

 in physiology under Claude Bernard in Paris, where he became im- 

 bued with the spirit of the experimental method. He was in point 

 of time the first experimental physiologist in America. He intro- 

 duced into this country and into the College of Physicians and Sur- 

 geons the idea that physiology is an experimental science, and he 

 was the first American teacher of physiology who taught by demon- 

 stration as well as by word of mouth. His demonstrative lectures 

 produced a furore of enthusiasm among the students of the College, 

 who still testify to the power and charm of his Instruction and his 

 Personality, and the singular grasp and lucidity of the text-book of 

 which he was the author. His book easily took the foremost place 

 among American text-books of physiology of its day. Dalton was an 

 early and shining example of the man of medicine who foregoes the 

 activities of practice to devote himself to experimental research and 

 practical teaching. He pointed out the direction in which American 



