THE VETERINARY INSTITUTIONS OF FRANCE. 273 



gj and surgery, parasitic diseases, breeding, agriculture, toxicology. 

 Excursions to the model farm. Clinic as before. Subjects reviewed 

 by appropriate assistants. 



The lectures on agriculture were then delivered by M. Heuze. 

 The subject of dissection has not been mentioned in the above 

 course, because of the irregularity of the hours devoted to it. 



The above plan is open to some criticism : one is at a loss to 

 understand why the word " or " is placed between so many branches, 

 except that the lecturer will dilate upon one " or " the other subject 

 at the lecture in question. Pathological anatomy is not mentioned, 

 but is treated at the same time with general pathology. Surgery 

 and special pathology are united in one series of lectures, and the 

 important branch of obstetrics is not mentioned, although we have 

 reason to know it is not neglected. Professor Miiller says that 

 " when one adds the number of hours devoted to lectures in the four 

 years' course of the French schools, he is surprised to find that they 

 are exceeded by the number required by the (former) three years' 

 course at Berlin." The number of professors at the French schools 

 is insufficient to do the work well that is required of them, and they 

 should be relieved by the addition of a greater number of special- 

 ists. "We shall see this plan better carried out when we come to 

 speak of the school at Berlin, although there is room for still further 

 improvement there, so far as the clinic is concerned. At the French 

 schools, the distribution of the studies over the educational term is 

 not conducive to the best interests of the scholars, too little being 

 required of them during the early part of their studies, and too 

 much toward their completion. This is equalized by the great 

 number of repetitions to which they are subjected by the assistants. 

 Clinical practice and surgery assume an undue prominence in the 

 French system, to the cost of pathological anatomy and the funda- 

 mental elements upon which medical science rests. It should ever 

 be remembered, in establishing a school for the education of men in 

 the principles of medicine, that the highly-prized practical man 

 never advances science an iota ; he is a money-getter, not a servant of 

 his race ; this has been most emphatically emphasized by the schools 

 of Britain, where practice has been the one desideratum, and sci- 

 ence almost totally neglected. The union of both in one person 

 makes the perfect practitioner in veterinary as well as human prac- 

 tice. One might suppose that the clinic of the Alfort school would 

 suffer from its being so distant from Paris, but this does not appear 

 to be the case, the country around being well populated. At the 

 time of Miiller's visit, which was during the vacation in the sum- 



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