370 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



undergraduate study, so largely expanded, but also in recently 

 developed disciplines. 



The clear appreciation of the close relationship of medicine to 

 other phases of biology ; the newly recognized importance of 

 practical familiarity with things themselves, rather than with 

 the impressions which another has gathered and more or less 

 lucidly imparts ; the patient training of the hand and eye and ear 

 to catch minutest variations in surface and color and shape and 

 sound all these requirements of modern medical instruction 

 involve pecuniary support far beyond that which was formerly 

 sufficient. 



As was to be expected, the necessity for improvement in the 

 medical curriculum and the urgency of the requirements of 

 research have been recognized at this university in the revision 

 and expansion of its medical course. And it is to be hoped that 

 the appeal for endowment of the medical school here at Yale, 

 made in the President's last report, may not go unheeded by those 

 who are now for a little while the custodians of wealth, and in 

 whose power it is to bring into play facilities for instruction and 

 capacities for research so full in the promise of immediate prac- 

 tical utility. 



What, now, is the attitude of the physician, in the light of the 

 broader and more exact science which is to-day at his disposal ? 

 It may be at once conceded that his physical presence has mainly 

 lost its old-time picturesqueness. 



It is inevitable that as soon as he laid aside the mysteries and 

 fictions and superstitions with which erstwhile he was wont to 

 invest his calling, was obliged to abandon charms and auguries 

 and secret remedies, and could no longer safely summon to his aid 

 the occult forces with which outgrown fantasies invested plant 

 and mineral and pregnant aspects of the stars, and was forced to 

 confess that in dealing with his charges he was even, as other 

 devotees to other sciences are, simply a student of common things 

 with the simple resources of actual knowledge and common sense 

 it was under these conditions, I say, inevitable that his claims 

 to confidence must more definitely rest upon his sound learning, 

 his obvious skill, his actual experience. 



A large part of the late surviving professional mannerism 

 and dictatorial assumption has also passed away, and the doctor 

 of to-day is a man of the world, the friend as well as the expert. 



It is a very wide-eyed generation which is coming on the scene, 

 and not prone to invest with unnecessary ceremonial or mystery 

 the dealings of its professional advisers with its ailments. Many 

 laymen know as well as we do that the administration of drugs in 

 their hour of stress is but an adjunct to the often more needful 

 and more potent guidance in diet, in regimen, and in the varied 



