MEDICAL SCIENCE AND PRACTICE. 



549 



sets it up anew at the rate of 3,500 ems per 

 hour, including setting, justifying, and dis- 

 tributing, which is five times the work of the 

 unaided hand. Its type lasts longer than when 

 set by hand, and every defective or turned typo 

 is thrown out by this mechanical automaton. 



The cause of public technical education finds 

 in the President of the Society of Mechanical 

 Engineers an earnest advocate, as is seen from 

 the following concluding remarks in Mr. Thurs- 

 ton's annual address : 



But the individual must bo taught, not simply per- 

 mitted to learn as best he can. "Education, directed 

 effectively with the object of giving, in least time and 

 at least cost, a preparation for all the duties coming to 

 the learner, whether in daily toil or in social life, U 

 called for; trade-schools must be incorporated into 

 the common-school system, and technical and profes- 

 sional colleges and great universities of science and 

 art must be placed beside the older academies of learn- 

 ing. And this need is most felt by our own col- 

 leagues, and by the people e_mployea by them. He 

 who would accomplish most in the proiession of the 

 mechanical engineer, or in the trades, must best com- 

 bine scientific attainments and especially experi- 

 mental knowledge with mechanical taste and ability, 

 and with, a good judgment ripened by large experi- 

 ence. He must be carefully, thoroughly, and skill- 

 fully taught the principles o'f his art m the technical 

 school, and the practice of his profession in office or 

 workshop. 



We have been late in seeing this necessity, and 

 must suffer for our dullness as a natiorr; but we aro 

 beginning to open our eyes and to move in this most 

 vital of all the duties of citizenship. One and two 

 and three centuries ago, wise men like Pascal and 

 Worcester and Vaucanson saw this greatest, highest 

 duty of governments and citizenship, but it is only 

 recently that we, as a people, have come to see its im- 

 portance. 



But now, the magnificent trade and technical school 

 system of Germany, the older if less complete educa- 

 tional system of France, the tardily begun but splen- 

 did later work of Great Britain, and the grand begin- 

 nings made in the United States, form a glorious 

 commencement of a revolution that shall peacefully 

 effect such changes during the next generation as, 

 probably, no one can realize until after their actual 

 accomplishment. 



With trade-schools in every town, technical schools 

 in every city ; colleges of science and the arts in every 

 State, and with a great technical university as a cen- 

 ter for the whole system, we shall yet see all combined 

 in a social organization that shall insure to eveiy one 

 absolute freedom to learn and to labor in any depart- 

 ment of industry, with absolute certainty of a fitting 

 recompense for all the zeal, intelligence, and good 

 work that the worker, whether man or woman, may 

 otfer the world. 



MEDICAL SCIENCE AND PRACTICE: 

 ITS PROGRESS. The meeting of the Interna- 

 tional Medical Congress, held in London dur- 

 ing the first week in August, 1881, afforded a 

 fitting occasion for the review of the progress 

 that has been made in medical science and 

 practice during the past generation. Several 

 of the speakers at the Congress, Accordingly, 

 referred to the present condition and the pros- 

 pects of the science, and represented them as 

 very hopeful. The president of the body, Sir 

 James Paget, said that " it will not be easy to 

 match the recent past. The advance in med- 

 ical knowledge within one's memory is amaz- 



ing, whether reckoned in the wonders of the 

 science not yet applied, or in practical results, 

 in the general lengthening of life, or, which is 

 still better, in the prevention and decrease of 

 pain and misery, and in the increase of work- 

 ing power." Professor Virchow said that 

 " we have reached the point which denotes 

 the boundary between ancient and modern 

 medicine " ; and " we may now say with satis- 

 faction, on looking back at a period which we 

 have ourselves lived through, and which com- 

 prises little more than a generation, that there 

 never before was a time when an equally great 

 zeal in investigation, or anything approaching 

 to a similar advance in knowledge and ability, 

 has shown itself among physicians." Professor 

 Huxley, remarking upon the disappearance of 

 older definitions of lite, observed that the con- 

 nection of medicine with the biological sciences 

 appeared to be more clearly defined. And 

 Professor Volkmann, speaking of the changes 

 which surgery had undergone within the past 

 ten years, said: "Great and unparalleled in 

 the history of medical science have been those 

 changes. Problems, thousands of years old, 

 have been solved, or are, at any rate, approach- 

 ing a sure solution ; the desires of our fathers 

 have been fulfilled beyond their hope and ex- 

 pectation." 



Medicine has been very slow in defining its 

 position among the sciences, and can hardly yet 

 be declared to answer a rigid definition of a sci- 

 ence. It is, nevertheless, scientific both in spi- 

 rit and doctrine ; and if the existence of a real 

 science of medicine can not yet be maintained, 

 medicine is certainly rooted and grounded in 

 science. It has become recognized as a part 

 of the science of biology, and may be, in some 

 sense, described as the applied science of bio- 

 logical doctrine. " It is so difficult," says Pro- 

 fessor Huxley, "to think of medicine otherwise 

 than as something which is necessarily con- 

 nected with curative treatment, that we are 

 apt to forget that there must be, and is, such a 

 thing as a pure science of medicine a 'pa- 

 thology' which has no more subservience to 

 practical ends than has zoology or botany. 

 The logical connection between this purely 

 scientific doctrine of disease, or pathology, and 

 ordinary biology, is easily traced. Living mat- 

 ter is characterized by its innate tendency to 

 exhibit a definite series of the morphological 

 and physiological phenomena which constitute 

 organization and life. Given a certain range 

 of conditions, and the phenomena remain the 

 same, within narrow limits, for each kind of 

 living thing. They furnish the normal and 

 typical characters of the species ; and, as such, 

 they are the subject-matter of ordinary biol- 

 ogy. Outside the range of these conditions, 

 the normal course of the cycle of vital phe- 

 nomena is disturbed; abnormal structure makes 

 its appearance, or the proper character and 

 mutual adjustment of the functions cease to be 

 preserved. The extent and importance of these 

 deviations from the typical life may vary in- 



