VIII UNIVERSITIES : ACTUAL AND IDEAL 221 



" If a man could be sure 



That his life would endure 

 For the space of a thousand long years " 



he might do a number of things not practicable 

 under present conditions. Methuselah might, with 

 much propriety, have taken half a century to get 

 his doctor's degree ; and might, very fairly, have 

 been required to pass a practical examination upon 

 the contents of the British Museum, before com- 

 mencing practice as a promising young fellow of 

 two hundred, or thereabouts. But you have four 

 years to do your work in, and are turned loose, to 

 save or slay, at two or three and twenty. 



Now, I put it to you, whether you think that, 

 when you come down to the realities of life when 

 you stand by the sick-bed, racking you brains for 

 the principles which shall furnish you with the 

 means of interpreting symptoms, and forming a 

 rational theory of the condition of your patient, it 

 will be satisfactory for you to find that those 

 principles are not there although, to use the 

 examination slang .which is unfortunately too 

 familiar to me, you can quite easily "give an 

 account of the leading peculiarities of the MarsM- 

 pialia" or " enumerate the chief characters of the 

 Composite," or "state the class and order of the 

 animal from which Castoreum is obtained." 



I really do not think that state of things will 

 be satisfactory to you ; I am very sure it will not 

 be so to your patient. Indeed, I am so narrow- 



