17-2 PROCEEDINGS OP THE ANATOMICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL 



funk" is often associated with perfect calmness under other condi- 

 tions. My experience is that exaggerated bonhomie on the part of 

 the examiner is just as likely to make things worse as better, and 

 best thing to do is to continue asking perfectly easy questions without 

 the least hurry for an answer until the candidate shows signs of being 

 at his ease. I have sometimes spent ten minutes in asking a man of 

 this kind simple questions and discussing little points which arose 

 out of them before I began to take any real notice of what his 

 answers were. I have never known one of these candidates who 

 really knew his work referred by an experienced examiner, though I 

 have sometimes seen them stricken absolutely dumb by an irritable, 

 impetuous, or inordinately friendly one. 



It is the nervous men who are near the line who tax the 

 examiner's skill most, and in these cases I think the teacher's know- 

 ledge should always be available, though it is difficult to imagine 

 nervousness so profound as to prevent a man, after a reasonable 

 time, from pointing out structures when their names are asked, pro- 

 vided he has seen them several times before. 



I have now tried to put before you some of the problems which 

 the teachers and examiners of anatomy have before them, and I have 

 tried to show how each acts as a drag on the other in making 

 any rapid change. The teacher dare not modify his teaching much 

 for fear of the examiner, while the latter is obliged to ask those 

 things which are currently taught lest he should be doing a grave 

 injustice to the candidates. Still there is little doubt that a consider- 

 able change could be gradually effected if we were all convinced of 

 the need for it and agreed on the lines it should take. I have 

 thought it well to bring the subject before this Society, instead of 

 something more strictly anatomical, in the hope that it may lead to 

 ><>me discussion and that I may learn in what light the matter is 

 viewed in one of our great northern schools of anatomy. 



And now I must stop. If, in what I have said, I have seemed 

 to disparage anatomy as a science really worth following for its own 

 sake, it was not my intention. The scientific side of anatomy alone 



