NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH 119 



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 appre- 

 hension of scientific conceptions, not only does he fail to at- 

 tach any meaning to the words "matter," "force," or "law" 

 in their scientific sense, 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 

 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 



Medical course many have learned little. We cannot claim anything 

 better than the Examiner of the University of London and the Cam- 

 bridge Lecturer have reported for their Universities. Supposing that 

 at school young people had acquired some exact elementary knowl- 

 edge in physics, chemistry, and a branch of natural history — say 

 botany — with the physiology connected with it, they would then have 

 gained necessary knowledge, with some practice in inductive reason- 

 ing. The whole studies are processes of observation and induction — 

 the best discipline of the mind for the purposes of life — for our pur- 

 poses 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 Medi- 

 cal course would be much lightened, and more time devoted to prac- 

 tical studies, including Sir Thomas Watson's 'final and supreme 

 stage' of the knowledge of Medicine." 



