124 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. V 



Until each of the greater truths of anatomy and 

 physiology has became an organic part of your minds 

 until you would know them if you were roused and 

 questioned in the middle of the night, as a man knows 

 the geography of his native place and the daily life of 

 his home. That is the sort of knowledge which, once 

 obtained, is a lifelong possession. Other occupations 

 may fill your minds it may grow dim and seem to be 

 forgotten but there it is, like the inscription on a 

 battered and defaced coin, which comes out when you 

 warm it. 



Hence the necessity to concentrate the attention 

 on these cardinal truths, and to discard a number of 

 extraneous subjects commonly supposed to be requisite 

 whether for general culture of the medical student or 

 to enable him to correct the possible mistakes of 

 druggists. Against this " Latin fetish " in medical 

 education, as he used to call it, he carried on a life- 

 long campaign, as may be gathered from his published 

 essays on medical education, and from letters given 

 in later chapters of this book. But there is another 

 side to such limitation in professional training. 

 Though literature is an essential in the preliminary, 

 general education, culture is not solely dependent 

 upon classics. 



Moreover, I would urge that a thorough study of 

 Human Physiology is in itself an education broader and 

 more comprehensive than much that passes under that 

 name. There is no side of the intellect which it does 

 not call into play, no region of human knowledge into 

 which either its roots or its branches do not extend ; like 

 the Atlantic between the Old and the New Worlds, its 

 waves wash the shores of the two worlds of matter and of 



