VIII UNIVERSITIES : ACTUAL AND IDEAL 210 



objection, which takes the general form of the 

 reproach that, in thus limiting the curriculum, we 

 are seeking to narrow it. We are told that the 

 medical man ought to be a person of good educa- 

 tion and general information, if his profession is to 

 hold its own among other professions ; that he 

 ought to know Botany, or else, if he goes abroad, 

 he will not be able to tell poisonous fruits from 

 edible ones ; that he ought to know drugs, as a 

 druggist knows them, or he will not be able to tell 

 sham bark and senna from the real articles ; that 

 he ought to know Zoology, because well, I really 

 have n'ever been able to learn exactly why he is to 

 be expected to know zoology. There is, indeed, 

 a popular superstition, that doctors know all 

 about things that are queer or nasty to the general 

 mind, and may, therefore, be reasonably expected 

 to know the " barbarous binomials " applicable to 

 snakes, snails, and slugs ; an amount of informa- 

 tion with which the general mind is usually com- 

 pletely satisfied. And there is a scientific su- 

 perstition that Physiology is largely aided by 

 Comparative Anatomy a superstition which, like 

 most superstitions, once had a grain of truth at 

 bottom ; but the grain has become homoeopathic, 

 since Physiology took its modern experimental 

 development, and became what it is now, the appli- 

 cation of the principles of Physics and Chemistry 

 to the elucidation of the phenomena of life, 



I hold as strongly as any one can do, that the 



