SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. 167 



year, for it is seldom more, namely, the training of the observation, is 

 lost. 



In the first case, the student discovers the actual thing for him- 

 self, and then fits the conventional name to it; in the second, he learns 

 the name first, then has the thing described in detail, and then, if he 

 is conscientious, checks that description with the thing itself, thus 

 going to Nature last. 



Lucky for him if he has the hardihood to say, even to himself, 

 when he fails to see what the book says he ought. Some men do but 

 most do not. By a long course of book training at school, they have 

 so lost faith in their own powers of observation that they instinctively 

 say to themselves, " The book says so, it must be right ; I can't see 

 properly ". Unless this sort of thing is corrected in the wards later 

 on, the man may make a gold medallist, but he will never have many 

 patients. 



Then what part should the lecturer on anatomy play in the 

 system of education ? One theory of his function, which I have 

 heard supported by very experienced men, is that he should help the 

 students to classify their knowledge by treating each subject in a very 

 precise and formal way, tabulating, heading and subdividing so that 

 their note-books reproduce almost exactly the pages of the text- 

 books. 



This method is valuable in preparing for written examinations, 

 but it is a relic of bygone days when books were scarce, and, after all, 

 is not really education. If books were not so much used it would be 

 useful enough, but, even then, hardly requires a skilled anatomist ; 

 any reader could go through so many pages of one of the text-books 

 and arrive at the same result. Another and quite opposite idea is to 

 try to interest students in the study of topographical anatomy by dis- 

 cussing, in as informal a manner as possible, the causes which have 

 led to the various shapes and relations of the structures. 



This is perhaps a slightly underhand way of trying to fix these 

 relations in the mind, but it does more than this, it enables the pupils 

 to follow the lines of thought of their teacher and helps them to think 



