Oct, lo, 1878] 



NATURE 



611 



and to speak of the " theoretical" and the "practical" por- 

 tion of medical studies. " Such a division," Mr. Lankester 

 truly said, " is a relic from the bad old times. Theory and 

 practice in medicine, as elsewhere, go hand in hand. 

 The results of scientific investigation cannot be applied 

 in the treatment of disease by the man untrained in 

 scientific method any more than the delicate tools of a 

 lathe can be used by one who has not himself devised 

 them, or a watch be mended by the aid of a treatise on 

 watch-making." 



Mr. Lankester pointed out that in the present unsatis- 

 factory state of the multitude of medical faculties in 

 England, dependent on the voluntary services of busy 

 medical practitioners, medical education must necessarily 

 be defective; and that so far as this is concerned, the 

 wealthy Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have for 

 long most shamefully neglected their duty. As a result 

 of this neglect on the part of our universities, medical 

 education in the last century was a thing almost un- 

 known in England. Those who were desirous of quali- 

 fying themselves for carrying on the profession with 

 anything like thoroughness, had to go to Scotland, or 

 Paris, or Italy, where the idea of a university with its 

 various "faculties," has all along been kept in view. 

 The multitude, however, were content with a simple 

 "apprenticeship" to a medical practitioner, while a few 

 latterly took to following the hospital physician round 

 the wards, to take note of the "great man's" receipts. 

 "But as for instruction in physics, in chemistry, in com- 

 parative anatomy, in physiology, in the general properties 

 and activities of living things, it had no existence in 

 London, and was not in any way required on the part of 

 the licensing bodies. The English universities mean- 

 while, which possessed rich endowments for carrying on 

 these studies, allowed jobbery and indifference to convert 

 their ancient medical officer into sinecures." It was from 

 Scotland, where the torch of true university life was kept 

 burning, that an impulse towards the establishment of 

 better things in benighted England came and set men to 

 work in London. The origin of University College was 

 then referred to, it being pointed out that Government, in its 

 caprice, denied the privilege of granting degrees to the vigo- 

 rous young institution, and conferred it upon a shadowy 

 body, to which it misapplied the title of London " Univer- 

 sity," a mere nominis umbra, and an utter misapplication 

 of the venerable term. However well the London Univer- 

 sity may have carried out its anomalous duty, we share 

 in Prof. Lankester's profound regret, that the grand old 

 title of " University" should have been in this way com- 

 pletely divorced from the work of study and teaching. 

 The result is that, in this country, not one man in a 

 hundred, even amongst those possessing university 

 degrees, knows what a university is. "The Universities 

 of Oxford and Cambridge, on the one hand, have entirely 

 departed from the old standard, and ought long since to 

 have been checked in their career and reformed by the 

 power which chartered and protected them in their early 

 days ; whilst the admirable body which we call the 

 University of London has precisely the same claim to 

 be called a university as has the Archbishop of 

 Canterbury." 



Prof. Lankester then went on to show on how wide a 

 basis of scientific investigation and study the medical ar 



ought to be built ; it is the outcome, the final result, of 

 observation. 



"This is the spirit," he said, "in which the great uni- 

 versities of Europe, with the exception of Oxford and 

 Cambridge, have fostered the study of medicine. This is 

 the explanation of the existence of chairs of Chemistry, of 

 Physics, of Botany, and of Zoology, in all their Medical 

 Faculties. Such is the nature of his work that the medical 

 man needs instruction and training in all the great 

 branches of physical science ; and from time to time the 

 methods of investigation, the modes of speculation ai d 

 the generalisations with which he has become famihar 

 in the course of these apparently remote studies, render 

 him most efficient service in the attempt to ascertain ar d 

 to deal with diseased states of the human body. It ;i 

 thus that a thorough knowledge of the organisation of 

 both plants and animals becomes part of the equipni rit 

 required by a medical man, but it is even more dirc'-ily 

 that the progress of knowledge relative toother organiMr.s 

 affects knowledge relative to the human organism. '1 he 

 knowledge of diseased and of healthy conditions of .11 

 organisms, all knowledge of living things, including 

 necessarily man himself, forms one compact interwoven 

 body of science termed biology, and upon this dire< -^i 

 the medical art is built, in it all medical practice has 

 foundation." 



But in order that the results of scientific research n\:iy 

 be applied to the alleviation of human suffering, there 

 must be continued investigation in order to produce new 

 knowledge. " The production of new knowledge," Mr. 

 Lankester justly said, " is a most absorbing and arduous 

 business. Men who have anything else to do except a 

 small amount of teaching can do very little— only a bit 

 here and there— in the production of new knowledge. 

 Men who are earning their livelihood in the practice of a 

 profession can do very little at it. Men who are pre- 

 paring students for examination all day all the year round 

 can do but little at it. Only men with fortunes, or men 

 who are paid by the institutions especially founded and 

 meant for the production of new knowledge, can be ex- 

 pected to do much in this way. The institutions especiuiy 

 founded and designed for this production of new know- 

 ledge, and richly supported by large annual grants of mone / 

 in the form of salaries and stipends, are abundant on the 

 Continent of Europe ; they are the Universities. In 

 London we have no such institution ; there is no Uni- 

 versity of London in this sense of the word. The medical 

 profession in England, though it has eleven " Facuhic "^ 

 in London and other "Faculties" in provincial towns, is 

 almost totally devoid of those splendid opportunities for 

 profound investigation— for the production of new kn< w 

 ledge bearing on medicine— which the appropriation of 

 public money and ancient endowments to the payiicnt 

 of the Medical Faculties in Germany, for instan >, 

 provides." 



It is certainly, as Mr. Lankester said, at first sight 

 rather astonishing that we laborious, hard-headed Eng- 

 lishmen, the countrymen of Harvey and Darwin, sh ■ ul 

 have to go to Germany for so much of our new know- 

 ledge, and that our text-books of science, instead of being 

 provided by the richly-endowed Fellows of Oxford and 

 Cambridge, should to a large extent bear on their t/ - 

 pages the names of German professors. This surj 



