iv.] SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION. 51 



master or other ; nor does he entertain any misgiving that the 

 method of learning which led to proficiency in the rules of 

 grammar will suffice to lead him to a mastery of the laws of 

 Nature. The youngster, thus unprepared for serious study, 

 is turned loose among his medical studies, with the result, in 

 nine cases out of ten, that the first year of his curriculum is 

 spent in learning how to learn. Indeed, he is lucky, if at the 

 end of the first year, by the exertions of his teachers and his 

 own industry, he has acquired even that art of arts. After 

 which there remain not more than three, or perhaps four, years 

 for the profitable study of such vast sciences as Anatomy, 

 Physiology, Therapeutics, Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics, and the 

 like, upon his knowledge or ignorance of which it depends 

 whether the practitioner shall diminish, or increase, the bills of 

 mortality. Now what is it but the preposterous condition of 

 ordinary school education which prevents a young man of 

 seventeen, destined for the practice of medicine, from being fully 

 prepared for the study of nature ; and from coming to the 

 medical school, equipped with that preliminary knowledge of the 

 principles of Physics, of Chemistry and of Biology, upon which ht&amp;gt; 

 has now to waste one of the precious years, every moment of 

 which ought to be given to those studies which bear directly 

 upon the knowledge of his profession ? 



There is another profession, to the members of which, I think, 

 a certain preliminary knowledge of physical science might be 

 quite as valuable as to the medical man. The practitioner 



the beginning of the Medical course many have learned little. We cannot 

 claim anything better than the Examiner of the University of London and 

 the Cambridge Lecturer have reported for their Universities. Supposing that 

 at school young people had acquired some exact elementary knowledge in 

 physics, chemistry, and a branch of natural history say botany with the 

 physiology connected with it, they would then have gained necessary know 

 ledge, with some practice in inductive reasoning. The whole studies are 

 processes of observation and induction the best discipline of the mind for 

 the purposes of life for our purposes not less than any. By such study 

 (says Dr. Whewell) of one or more departments of inductive science the 

 mind may escape from the thraldom of mere words. By that plan the 

 burden of the early Medical course would be much lightened, and more time 

 devoted to practical studies, including Sir Thomas Watson s final and 

 supreme stage of the knowledge of Medicine.&quot; 



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