158 AROUND THE WOULD VIA INDIA. 



It seems to me that the order of subjects in these 

 examinations is excellent, leading the students from the 

 elementary branches up a gradual incline to the most 

 complicated practical subjects. Anatomy is taught in 

 England better and more thoroughly than in any other 

 country. The English surgeon is invariably a good 

 anatomist. The Australian schools, conducted as they 

 are largely by men who obtained their education in 

 the United Kingdom, place the same stress on this, the 

 most important of all the primary branches, and when 

 their students graduate they know their anatomy. X<> 

 time is spent in making skeletons of clay. Gray's Anat- 

 omy and Heath's Dissector are their text-books and the 

 cadaver their object lesson. Professor Watson, of the 

 Adelaide University, has little confidence in lecture- 

 as a means of teaching anatomy, and spends most of 

 his time in the dissecting room with 1 his students, super- 

 vising, demonstrating and directing their work. Some 

 of the dissections I examined were sufficient proof of 

 the students' interest and diligence in acquiring their 

 knowledge of anatomv and the efficiencv of the methods 

 of teaching employed. 



The only fault I could find with the methods of 

 teaching employed in the Australian medical schools is 

 that too much weight is still given to didactic lectures 

 and too little attention is paid to recitation courses. 

 There are, however, indications that gradual changes 

 will soon reverse this order of things. The attendance 

 at the medical schools is necessarily small, the teaching 

 force, on the other hand, in each school is large, condi- 

 tions most favorable for systematic, theoretic teaching 

 by the use of reliable text-books, recitations, remarks 

 and demonstrations. Each of the three medical schools 

 has the practical control over a hospital of 200 and 

 more beds, where the main clinical teaching is done. Tn 

 Sydney it is the Eoyal Prince Albert Hospital : in Mel- 

 bourne, the Mel bourne Hospital, and in Adelaide, the 

 Adelaide Hospital. In all of these cities the students 



