170 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANATOMICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL 



known to them. They return with a map and description of the 

 shape and relative positions of hills, rivers, woods, etc., the names of 

 which do not matter at that stage. The description of an unknown 

 piece of the body is singularly like that of a piece of country, and 

 probably the method which helps the one would help the other. My 

 belief is that half the young men who are turned out by our Schools 

 and Universities would be incapable of writing a readable and reason- 

 able description of any piece of road down which they had been in the 

 habit of walking twice a day for many years. Men of this stamp are 

 admitted as students of medicine in large numbers, and, apparently, 

 the General Medical Council is satisfied that their incapacity to put 

 their ideas on paper is no barrier to their healing the sick. Realising 

 this fact that students do not, as a. rule, do themselves justice on 

 paper, I am inclined to lay less stress on this part of the examination, 

 and whenever I get a good clear drawing or diagram, in answer to 

 a topographical question, I mark it most liberally, because, if a man 

 can draw a thing, he knows it no matter how involved his description 

 may be. On the other hand, students fresh from the hands of a 

 clever coach have often practised writing out the very questions set 

 in the examination or at least some parts of them, and sometimes 

 write a most excellent account of structures which they are quite un- 

 able to recognise in the body. I do not wish to be understood to 

 hold that the written examination is useless. I think that the in- 

 formation it can give is most valuable, when used judiciously, but I 

 do not think that the practice of allotting as many marks to the 

 paper as to the oral is a wise one, and I believe that many of those 

 miscarriages of justice which all teachers know do occasionally occur 

 are due to this. A bad paper is a useful danger signal, showing that 

 the writer is probably an incompetent anatomist, though possibly only 

 incompetent at expressing his knowledge. A good paper shows that 

 probably the writer is a good anatomist, perhaps only a skilfully 

 crammed one, or, perhaps, one who has copied from notes during the 

 examination, for I am told that in certain examinations a consider- 

 able amount of copying goes on, and, when a man is an adept at it, 



