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I heard the other day in an admirable address (the 

 Hunterian Oration) deal fully and wisely with this very 

 topic. 1 



A young man commencing the study of medicine is 

 at once required to endeavour to make an acquaintance 

 with a number of sciences, such as Physics, as Chemistry, 

 as Botany, as Physiology, which are absolutely and entirely 

 strange to him, however excellent his so-called education 

 at school may have been. Not only is he devoid of all 

 apprehension of scientific conceptions, not only does he 

 fail to attach any meaning to the words "matter," 

 "force," or "law" in their scientific senses, but, worse 

 still, he has no notion of what it is to come into contact 

 with nature, or to lay his mind alongside of a physical 

 fact, and try to conquer it, in the way our great naval 

 hero told his captains to master their enemies. His 

 whole mind has been given to books, and I am hardly 

 exaggerating if I say that they are more real to him 

 ^ than Nature. He imagines that all knowledge can be 

 got out of books, and rests upon the authority of some 



1 Mr. Quain's words (Medicil Times and Gazette, February 20) are : " A 

 few words as to our special Medical course of instruction and the influence 

 upon it of such changes in the elementary schools as I have mentioned. The 

 student now enters at once upon several sciences physics, chemistry, anatomy, 

 physiology, botany, pharmacy, therapeutics all these, the facts and the 

 language and the laws of each, to be mastered in eighteen months. Up to 

 the beginning of the Medical course many have learned little. We cannot 

 claim anything better than the Examiner of the University of London and 

 the Cambridge Lecturer have reported for their Universities. Supposing that 

 at school young people had acquired some exact elementary knowledge in 

 physics, chemistry, and a branch of natural history say botany with the 

 physiology connected with it, they would then have gained necessary know- 

 ledge, with some practice in inductive reasoning. The whole studies are 

 processes of observation and induction the best discipline of the mind for 

 the purposes of life for our purposes not less than any. ' By such study 

 (says Dr. Whewell) of one or more departments of inductive science the 

 mind may escape from the thraldom of mere words.' By that plan the 

 burden of the early Medical course would be much lightened, and more time 

 devoted to practical studies, including Sir Thomas Watson's * final and supreme 

 stage ' of the kuowledge of Medicine. 5 ' 



