V NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH 115 



and of which he had not obtained the remotest 

 conception from his instructors ? He had to 

 familiarise himself with ideas of the course and 

 powers of Nature, to which his attention had never 

 been directed during his school-life, and to learn, 

 for the first time, that a world of facts lies outside 

 and beyond the world of words. I appeal to those 

 who know what engineering is, to say how far I am 

 right in respect to that profession ; but with regard 

 to another, of no less importance, I shall venture 

 to speak of my own knowledge. There is no one 

 of us who may not at any moment be thrown, 

 bound hand and foot by physical incapacity, into 

 the hands of a medical practitioner. The chances 

 of life and death for all and each of us may, at any 

 moment, depend on the skill with which that prac- 

 titioner is able to make out what is wrong in our 

 bodily frames, and on his ability to apply the proper 

 remedy to the defect. 



The necessities of modern life are such, and the 

 class from which the medical profession is chiefly 

 recruited is so situated, that few medical men can 

 hope to spend more than three or four, or it may 

 be five, years in the pursuit of those studies which 

 are immediately germane to physic. How is that all 

 too brief period spent at present ? I speak as an 

 old examiner, having served some eleven or twelve 

 years in that capacity in the University of London, 

 and therefore having a practical acquaintance with 

 the subject; but I might fortify myself by the 



