RELATION OF PHYSIOLOGY TO MEDICINE. 101 



also, I feel sure, react with equally stimulating effect 

 on the main laboratories. In my own experience, 

 practical human problems have always been an enor- 

 mous stimulus to new physiological work and new ideas. 

 The study and means of control of chronic diseases would, 

 I think, benefit very particularly from these clinical 

 laboratories. 



Another suggestion which I should like to support is 

 that the holders of chairs of systematic medicine or 

 surgery should be freed from private practice. I cannot 

 see how they can efficiently perform their very important 

 duties otherwise, for they ought to keep in close and 

 living contact with all parts of their subject, besides 

 superintending the development of new forms of treat- 

 ment and scientific investigation in the wards under 

 their charge. The time has come, it seems to me, for 

 placing these chairs on the same footing as other chairs 

 in the Medical Faculty. 



In a recent visit to America nothing struck me so 

 much as the extraordinarily rapid development of medical 

 teaching and research in the best universities. In place 

 of the pompous ignorance of physiology and pathology 

 which one meets with so often among medical teachers 

 in Europe, there was everywhere considerable knowledge 

 of, and enthusiastic belief in, scientific methods. Clinical 

 laboratories, and keen young men to work in them, were 

 appearing in all directions. Side by side with this 

 clinical scientific activity there was an equally marked 

 development in the pure scientific laboratories and their 

 research work, and in the broadness of view which goes 

 with originality. Other features were the introduction 

 of whole-time professorships of medicine and surgery, 



