THE REFORM OF THE MEDICAL CURRICULUM 655 



situation. But a few months after I commenced to breathe an 

 atmosphere of apomorphine ^ at St. Bartholomew's Hospital 

 Medical School in 1870, my chief Matthiessen came to an 

 untimely end. I discovered him, one afternoon, asleep for ever, 

 in his armchair : my first experience of real life — in itself an 

 event to make a 3'oung man think. Had he lived, Barts might 

 well have been made the centre of research on alkaloids and 

 their use in medicine, a centre of inspiration — as he was a 

 man of indomitable energ}', full of scientific enthusiasm, with 

 an extraordinary faculty of choosing workers and making them 

 work ; he had too the gift of insight and was interested in 

 things organic and inorganic ; in fact, he was a complete chemist 

 in feeling : one who could determine electrical conductivities 

 without lapsing into ionomania and who \vould have set his face 

 against unreal, pretentious talk on the subject. His w^ork on 

 narcotine with Carey Foster and Alder Wright practically laid 

 the foundations of alkaloidal chemistry. Whenever a chance 

 comes to us in this country, however, we seem to let it lapse: 

 lack of scientific training and of the scientific spirit has led the 

 medical profession to overlook the advantages accruing from 

 systematic research work, and the development of a narrow 

 humanitarian spirit among the public now threatens to put a 

 complete stop to such work in medical schools, as the hospitals 

 are held to exist solely for the cure of poor patients : the 

 number of persons, poor and rich, is in no way thought of who 

 die lingering deaths because of our neglect to carr}- on 

 systematic inquiry in directions likely to be of benefit to 

 medicine. The chance once in the hands of Barts, thoughtlessly 

 sacrificed, will not soon occur again, 1 fear. 



In my former article, I spoke of a just feeling among medical 

 men " that the present course in chemistry is a totally unfit 

 preparation for medical practice " — and added : " this is the 

 feeling we have to meet and provide for." Dr. Wade notwith- 

 standing, I still affirm this to be the case, and I have reason to 

 think that the teaching of other preliminary subjects is more 

 or less open to similar ci:iticism. 



He has represented me as having made "an attack" on the 

 curriculum of the University of London — in reality, my remarks 



' Apomorphine was then under investigation and was in the air in more senses 

 than one. 



