Srimtifir (&bm%iwn. 57 



influence on several of the professions. I ask any one 

 who has adopted the calling ofan engineer, how much 

 time he lost when he left school, because he had to 

 devote himself to pursuits which were absolutely novel 

 and strange, and of which he had not obtained the 

 remotest conception from his instructors ? He had 

 to familiarize 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, forf 

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

 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 practitioner 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, thaiffew 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 imme- 

 diately 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 authority of the 

 President of the College of Surgeons, Mr. Quain, whom 



