144 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERAIONS 



know a thing, as to have known it, and known it thoroughly. 

 If you have once known a thing in this way it is easy to re- 

 new your knowledge when you have forgotten it; and when 

 you begin to take the subject up again, it slides back upon 

 ^the familiar grooves with great facility. 



Lastly comes the question as to how the university may 

 co-operate in advancing medical education. A medical 

 school is strictly a technical school — a school in which a 

 practical profession is taught — while a university ought to 

 be a place in which knowledge is obtained without direct 

 reference to professional purposes. It is clear, therefore, 

 that a university and its antecedent, the school, may best 

 co-operate with the medical school by making due provi- 

 sion for the study of those branches of knowledge which 

 lie at the foundation of medicine. 



At present, young men come to the medical schools with- 

 out a conception of even the elements of physical science; 

 they learn, for the first time, that there are such sciences 

 as physics, chemistry, and physiology, and are introduced 

 to anatomy as a new thing. It may be safely said that, with 

 a large population of medical students, much of the first 

 session is wasted in learning how to learn — in familiarising 

 themselves with utterly strange conceptions, and in awaken- 

 ing their dormant and wholly untrained powers of observa- 

 tion and of manipulation. It is difficult to over-estimate 

 the magnitude of the obstacles which are thrown in the way 

 of scientific training by the existing system of school educa- 

 tion. Not only are men trained in mere book-work, ignor- 

 ant of what observation means, but the habit of learning 

 from books alone begets a disgust of observation. The 

 book-learned student will rather trust to what he sees in a 

 book than to the witness of his own eyes. 



There is not the least reason why this should be so, and. 



