18 ADVANCED LESSONS IN PRACTICAL PHYSIOLOGY 



to familiarize themselves with the use of operative instruments and the 

 action of different drugs. During a course of this kind each student is 

 repeatedly called upon to attend to the narcosis; to perform trache- 

 otomy; to expose and ligate blood-vessels, and to isolate nerves and 

 other structures. It need scarcely be emphasized that the operative 

 technic acquired by him upon animals under test conditions, will serve 

 him in good stead later on when forced to repeat these procedures upon 

 human beings. 



The contention that students may derive their knowledge of physi- 

 ology wholly from practical work, is scarcely worthy of consideration. 

 While the average student is well able to abstract definite single facts 

 from experiments, he is as yet in no position to appraise these facts and 

 to combine them into a connected story of physiologic events. Knowl- 

 edge gained by experimentation alone is, indeed, very fragmentary. 

 It is the duty of the lecturer to bridge over these defects and to supply 

 the student with those fundamental data which he is to make use of 

 later on in formulating physiologic principles. Facts, as such, are of 

 little value unless they can be joined to yield certain truths which have 

 a direct bearing upon the student's subsequent clinical work. The 

 student should be made to "physiologize" along lines more closely re- 

 lated to his chosen profession and should attain this state in as short a 

 time as possible. In many instances this mental evolution may be 

 greatly facilitated by referring to problems of general interest, such as 

 may be obtained from treatises upon comparative physiology, biology, 

 physics, and chemistry. Comparative physiology, in particular, is very 

 rich in facts which will greatly aid the lecturer in clearing up doubtful 

 or complex points in special physiology. 



In the medical schools of higher grade about three hundred hours 

 are allotted to physiology, exclusive of physiologic chemistry and 

 clinical physiology or experimental medicine. This period of time is 

 spent in part in the laboratory and in part in the lecture room. As a 

 rule, one hundred and eighty hours are assigned to practical work and 

 one hundred and twenty hours to lectures and conferences. Inasmuch 

 as the academic year usually comprises thirty weeks, exclusive of the 

 time set aside for examinations, the above enumeration leads us to infer 

 that each student must devote ten hours per week to physiology. In 

 many institutions, however, the "concentrated" system of teaching is 

 employed, enabling the student by constant daily attendance to com- 

 plete his work in physiology within about four months similar periods 

 of time being set aside for anatomy and physiologic chemistry. 



Before submitting these lessons in practical physiology to the stu- 

 dents I should like to mention that I have attempted to embody in 

 them all those experiments which can be conveniently performed with 

 the aid of simple apparatus. The lessons begin with experiments 

 upon muscle and nerve, and gradually make a greater and greater 

 demand upon the experimental aptitude of the student. Those experi- 

 ments which require complex apparatus and may be more conveniently 



