t ,s- s v 



V 



in.] ON MEDICAL EDUCATION. 67 



profession in two or three central schools, there would 

 be abundant means for maintaining able professors not, 

 indeed, for enriching them, as they would be able to 

 enrich themselves by practice but for enabling them 

 to make that choice which such men are so willing to 

 make ; namely, the choice between wealth and a modest 

 competency, when that modest competency is to be 

 combined with a sd^ntific career, and the means of ad- 

 vancing knowledge. I do not believe that all the talking 

 about, and tinkering of, medical education will do the 

 slightest good until the fact is clearly recognized, that men 

 must be thoroughly grounded in the theoretical branches 

 of their profession, and that to this end the teaching of 

 those theoretical branches must be confined to two or 

 three centres. 



Now let me add one other word, and that is, that if 

 I were a despot, I would cut down these branches to a 

 very considerable extent. The next thing to be done- 

 beyond that which I mentioned just now, is to go back 

 to primary education. The great step towards a thorough 

 medical education is to insist upon the teaching of the 

 elements of the physical sciences in all schools, so that 

 medical students shall not go up to the medical colleges 

 utterly ignorant of that with which they have to deal ; 

 to insist on the elements of chemistry, the elements of 

 botany, and the elements of physics being taught in our 

 ordinary and common schools, so that there shall be some 

 preparation for the discipline of medical colleges. And, 

 if this reform were once effected, you might confine the 

 " Institutes of Medicine " to physics as applied to phy- 

 siology to chemistry as applied to physiology to 

 physiology itself, and to anatomy. Afterwards, the 

 student, thoroughly grounded in these matters, might go 

 to any hospital he pleased for the purpose of studying 

 the practical branches of his profession. The practical 



