220 ON THOUGHT IN MEDICINE. 



me to divide physiology, in order to restore the good 

 old time ; that I myself should lecture on the really 

 intellectual part, and should hand over the lower 

 experimental part to a colleague whom he regarded as 

 good enough for the purpose. He quite gave me up 

 when I said that I myself considered experiments to 

 be the true basis of science. 



I mention these points, which I myself have ex- 

 perienced, to elucidate the feeling of the older schools, 

 and indeed of the most illustrious representatives of 

 medical science, in reference to the progressive set 

 of ideas of the natural sciences; in literature these 

 ideas naturally found feebler expression, for the old 

 gentlemen were cautious and worldly wise. 



You will understand how great a hindrance to 

 progress such a feeling on the part of influential and 

 respected men must have been. The medical education 

 of that time was based mainly on the study of books ; 

 there were still lectures, which were restricted to mere 

 dictation ; for experiments and demonstrations in the 

 laboratory the provision made was sometimes good and 

 sometimes the reverse ; there were no physiological 

 and physical laboratories in which the student himself 

 might go to work. Liebig's great deed, the founda- 

 tion of the chemical laboratory, was complete, as far 

 as chemistry was concerned, but his example had 

 not been imitated elsewhere. Yet medicine possessed 



