ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 145 



in fact, when elementary education becomes that which I 

 have assumed it ought to be, this state of things will no 

 longer exist. There is not the slightest difficulty in giving 

 sound elementary instruction in physics, in chemistry, and 

 in the elements of human physiology, in ordinary schools. 

 In other words, there is no reason why the student should 

 not come to the medical school, provided with as much 

 knowledge of these several sciences as he ordinarily picks 

 up in the course of his first year of attendance at the medi- 

 cal school. 



I am not saying this without full practical justification 

 for the statement. For the last eighteen years we have had 

 in England a system of elementary science teaching carried 

 out under the auspices of the Science and Art Department, 

 by which elementary scientific instruction is made readily 

 accessible to the scholars of all the elementary schools in the 

 country. Commencing with small beginnings, carefully 

 developed and improved, that system now brings up for 

 examination as many as seven thousand scholars in the 

 subject of human physiology alone. I can say that, out of 

 that number, a large proportion have acquired a fair amount 

 of substantial knowledge; and that no inconsiderable per- 

 centage show as good an acquaintance with human physi- 

 ology as used to be exhibited by the average candidates 

 for medical degrees in the University of London, when I 

 was first an examiner there twenty years ago; and quite as 

 much knowledge as is possessed by the ordinary student 

 of medicine at the present day. I am justified, therefore, 

 in looking forward to the time when the student who pro- 

 poses to devote himself to medicine will come, not abso- 

 lutely raw and inexperienced as he is at present, but in a 

 certain state of preparation for further study; and I look to 

 the university to help iiim still further forward in that stage 



