PREFACE. 



IT has seemed to me that there is needed a radical 

 change in the teaching of physiology. The old way of 

 teaching physiology merely from the text-book has been 

 outgrown in most of the best schools. Many teachers are 

 in the next stage of development. They use the text- 

 book largely, but have experiments to illustrate the text. 

 That is, they use first the text-book, and secondly the 

 experiments. 



It would seem that the logical way to teach the ele- 

 ments of physiology, as the elements of other sciences, 

 would be, first, to study the specimen and then to go to 

 the text-book for additional facts after we have thoroughly 

 laid the foundation with the specimens. The text-book 

 should be used, but the foundation must first be laid from 

 the study of the actual animals in the laboratory. This 

 has long been the method of teaching botany, chemistry, 

 and the other sciences. Why should physiology be taught 

 so very differently ? Some have thought that the subject 

 was not one for experimental work in the high and normal 

 schools. But that can be easily disproved by visiting 

 some really good teaching in this subject. The student's 

 own body may be studied to a certain extent, and then 



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