46 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



only homage is the health and beauty of the children who play around 

 his statue. 



But, after all, it is not so much by direct and immediate contribu- 

 tions to the art of healing that Physiology has vindicated her ancient 

 title of the institutes of medicine, numerous and important as these 

 contributions have been. It is still more by the scientific spirit which 

 has transformed the empty learning so justly ridiculed by Moliere 

 and Le Sage into the practical efficiency of modern surgery. Let me 

 give an instance of what I mean. The notion of measuring the tem- 

 perature of the body is simple enough, and the rough observation that 

 in inflammation the temperature is raised had led to the various terms 

 by which it was denoted in ancient medicine, and to numberless theories 

 now happily forgotten. But although the thermometer was well known, 

 and had been applied by many scientific physicians, notably by De 

 Haen, by Dr. John Davy, and by Sir Benjamin Brodie, yet the practi- 

 cal value of the clinical thermometer which now every practitioner 

 carries in his pocket was not understood until the other day. Those 

 only who had been trained in accurate physical and physiological in- 

 vestigations, who had learned the worse than uselessness of " rough 

 observation," were able to see the enormous importance of clinical 

 thermometry. This most practical of modern improvements in medi- 

 cine would never have been dreamed of by " practical men " ; we owe 

 it to the scientific training of German laboratories. 



If physiology is of such great national importance, if the necessity 

 of experimental research is so vital to the common national wealth, to 

 agriculture and commerce, to health and well-being, ought not its well- 

 ascertained results to be taught in our common schools, and its prose- 

 cution directly encouraged by the state ? 



There is no question of the great importance of children being 

 taught the rudimentary laws of health, the bodily evils of dirt and 

 sloth and vice, the excellence of temperance, the danger of the first 

 inroads of disease. Such teaching, now broadcast in many excellent 

 manuals, as " The Personal Care of Health," by the late Dr. Parkes, 

 and Dr. Bridges's " Catechism of Health," is no doubt extremely val- 

 uable, and happily is daily more and more diffused. But when beyond 

 the direct utility of such knowledge we attempt to make it an intel- 

 lectual discipline, there are, I conceive, difficulties which will always 

 prevent even elementary physiology from forming an important part 

 of general education. First, there is the practical difficulty of the 

 necessary dissections ; next, the impossibility of making j^hysiology 

 demonstrative ; and, thirdly, the abstruseness of the subject. It is 

 impossible to have even an elementary knowledge of the laws of liv- 

 ing beings without a very considerable familiarity with those of phys- 

 ics and of chemistry, and even in medical schools it requires all our 

 efforts to prevent it degenerating into a mere dogmatic statement of 



