256 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



psychology of human approach. This is absolutely neces- 

 sary in his education, but he is never taught it. ' ' 



Nor are such views confined to the leaders in medical 

 thought in this country. Sir James Mackenzie, probab- 

 ly the leading English authority on diseases of the heart, 

 in his recent book on "The Future of Medicine" says, 

 ' ' The chief difficulty is in the fact that there is no teacher 

 with a broad outlook on medicine who can see all the 

 different branches in their proper perspective. Fifty 

 years ago, progress was being made on certain lines 

 which tended to a clearer conception of what medical 

 education was, because the teachers were men who had 

 taken a broad outlook. At the present day, there is not 

 a single teacher in a school of medicine capable of taking 

 that broad outlook. When any attempt is made to 

 modify the instruction necessary for the general prac- 

 titioner, every kind of individual connected with edu- 

 cation is consulted except the one individual capable of 

 showing from his own experience where medicine fails, 

 that is, the general practitioner himself." 



The situation, today, is radically different from that of 

 fifty years ago. In those days, the surgeon taught anat- 

 omy, operative surgery, surgical diagnosis, and operat- 

 ive technique. The medical student who worked with 

 Sir Astley Cooper, John Hunter, Everhard Home, Syme, 

 or any of the other great surgeons of that day, learned 

 from them, not every anatomical fact regarding the hu- 

 man body, which it is not possible for anyone except the 

 professional anatomist to learn or retain for any length 

 of time, but those anatomical facts which are necessary 

 and essential for the proper practice of surgery, and he 

 learned them with an exactness and a thoroughness 

 which remained with him through life. From the same 

 teacher, he learned his surgical diagnosis and his oper- 

 ative technique. He stood beside and assisted him in 

 the operations. He learned the after-care of his surgi- 

 cal patients but, most important of all, he learned from 

 these great leaders not only how to handle surgical con- 

 ditions, but also how to handle patients suffering from 

 surgical conditions. Just as the student of the early 

 days who "read medicine" with a preceptor learned the 



