INTEMPERANCE IN STUDY. 649 



and a little more play would be desirable, and that there need be no 

 cause for surprise to find that many of the scholars suffer from head- 

 aches, ancemia, arrested development, and various manifestations of 

 exhausted nerve-force. 



Then there are the school examinations, and these, I am satisfied, 

 require great care, while most useful means of rendering the knowl- 

 edge acquired by the pupils definite. A former pupil in the sixth 

 form writes : " With regard to examinations, an hour's examination in 

 each subject was supposed to take place once a month. At the end of 

 the term we had from a week to a fortnight's examination in all sub- 

 jects prepared during the term. Making felloxos learn up all their 

 repetition at end of term, and keeping them hack if they fail to say ity 

 I consider a piece of barbarism,.'''' I believe that in many schools the 

 examinations at the end of the term embrace so many subjects, and 

 lead to so much cramming of minute details, that from these causes 

 and the spirit of emulation excited the brain is often unduly stimu- 

 lated, and a state of commotion induced which is highly undesirable. 

 It is true that a long holiday then comes to the scholar's relief, but 

 even an extremely long holiday does not render it safe to imdergo 

 extremely severe mental strain. I suspect that with some it is thought 

 to do so, but it. is most important that this error should be clearly 

 pointed out. A schoolmaster recently remarked to me that a boy 

 would sometimes answer the first paper in the examination veiy well, 

 the next not so well, and by the time he was engaged in the last ques- 

 tions he would be muddled and stupid. " He seemed to have got to 

 the end of his brain," as the master aptly expressed it. 



I wish now to refer to the present system of medical education. 

 How can it be otherwise than injurious when we consider that during 

 recent years the amount of knowledge which it is necessary to master 

 has prodigiously increased in every department, while the length of 

 time in which to acquire it remains the same ? 



In regard to some examinations, a tremendous burden is laid upon 

 the memory. There is a long period of strain, the climax of which is 

 reached when the period of examination arrives, during which the 

 student's mind has to hold in solution the details of knowledge on 

 many subjects. It is often a solution saturated with minute facts and 

 figures, many of which are of no permanent use, and indeed can not 

 be remembered any longer. The mind is cramped and narrowed by 

 this mischievous cramming, as must necessarily happen when the 

 issue of an examination is made largely to hang upon a retentive 

 memory. 



While no one proposes to go back to the old system of medical 

 education, it may well be doubted whether the character of these 

 examinations is calculated to develop the best practitioners or physi- 

 cians, loading the memory, as they too often do, at the expense of 

 breadth, depth, and originality. The lectures delivered in the medical 



