iv.J Scientific <gjutcati0it. 59 



master or other ; nor does he entertain any misgiving 

 that the method of learning which led to proficiency 

 in the rules of grammar, will suffice to lead him to a 

 mastery of the laws of Nature. The youngster, thus 

 unprepared for serious study, is turned loose among 

 his medical studies, with the result, in nine cases out 

 of ten, that the first year of his curriculum is spent 

 in learning how to learn. Indeed, he is lucky, if at 

 the end of the first year, by the exertions of his teachers 

 and his own industry, he has acquired even that art of 

 arts. After which there remain not more than three, 

 or perhaps four, years for the profitable study of such 

 vast sciences as Anatomy, Physiology, Therapeutics, 

 Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics, and the like, upon his 

 knowledge or ignorance of which it depends whether 

 the practitioner shall diminish, or increase, the bills of 

 mortality. Now what is it but the preposterous con- 

 dition of ordinary school education which prevents a 

 young man of seventeen, destined for the practice of 

 medicine, from being fully prepared for the study of 

 nature; and from coming to the medical school, equipped 

 with that preliminary knowledge of the principles of 

 Physics, of Chemistry, and of Biology, upon which he 

 has now to waste one of the precious years, every 

 moment of which ought to be given to those studies 

 which bear directly upon the knowledge of his 

 profession ? 



There is another profession, to the members of which, 

 I think, a certain preliminary knowledge of physical 

 science might be quite as valuable as to the medical 

 man. The practitioner of medicine sets before himself 

 the noble object of taking care of man's bodily welfare ; 

 but the members of this other profession undertake to 

 "minister to minds diseased," and, so far as may be, 

 to diminish sin and soften sorrow. Like the medical 



