ADDRESS ON- UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 141 



tion several that enter into the usual medical curriculum 

 of the present day. I have said not a word about zoology, 

 comparative anatomy, botany, or materia medica. Assur- 

 edly this is from no light estimate of the value or importance 

 of such studies in themselves. It may be taken for granted 

 that I should be the last person in the world to object to 

 the teaching of zoology, or comparative anatomy, in them- 

 selves; but I have the strongest feeling that, considering 

 the number and the gravity of those studies through which 

 a medical man must pass, if he is to be competent to dis- 

 charge the serious duties which devolve upon him, subjects 

 which lie so remote as these do from his practical pursuits 

 should be rigorously excluded. The young man, who has 

 enough to do in order to acquire such familiarity with the 

 structure of the human body as will enable him to perform 

 the operations of surgery, ought not, in my judgment, to be 

 occupied w4th investigations into the anatomy of crabs and 

 starfishes. Undoubtedly the doctor should know the com- 

 mon poisonous plants of his own country when he sees them; 

 but that knowledge may be obtained by a few hours devoted 

 to the examination of specimens of such plants, and the 

 desirableness of such knowledge is no justification, to my 

 mind, for spending three months over the study of system- 

 atic botany. Again, materia rdedica, so far as it is a knowl- 

 edge of drugs, is the business of the druggist. In all other 

 callings the necessity of the division of labour is fully recog- 

 nised, and it is absurd to require of the medical man that 

 he should not avail himself of the special knowledge of 

 those whose business it is to deal in the drugs which he uses. 

 It is all very well that the physician should know that castor 

 oil comes from a plant, and castoreum from an animal, and 

 how they are to be prepared; but for all the practical purposes 

 of his profession that knowledge is not of one whit more 



