in.] ON MEDICAL EDUCATION. 63 



machine works. And just as any sensible man, who has 

 a valuable watch, does not meddle with it himself, but 

 goes to some one who has studied watchmaking, and_ 

 understands what the effect of doing this or that may 

 be ; so, I suppose, the man who, having charge of that 

 valuable machine, his own body, wants to have it kept 

 in good order, comes to a professor of the medical art 

 for the purpose of having it set right, believing that, by 

 deduction from the facts of structure and from the facts 

 of function, the physician will divine what may be the 

 matter with his bodily watch at that particular time, and 

 what may be the best means of setting it right. If that 

 may be taken as a just representation of the relation of 

 the theoretical branches of medicine what we may call 

 the institutes of medicine, to use an old term to the 

 practical branches, I think it will be obvious to you that 

 they are of prime and fundamental importance. What- 

 ever tends to affect the teaching of them injuriously 

 must tend to destroy and to disorganize the whole fabric 

 of the medical art. I think every sensible man has seen 

 this long ago ; but the difficulties in the way of attain- 

 ing good teaching in the different branches of the 

 theory, or institutes, of medicine are very serious. It is 

 a comparatively easy matter pray mark that I use the 

 word " comparatively "it is a comparatively easy 

 matter to learn anatomy and to teach it ; it is a very 

 difficult matter to learn physiology and to teach it. It 

 is a very difficult matter to know and to teach those 

 branches of physics and those branches of chemistry 

 which bear directly upon physiology ; and hence it is 

 that, as a matter of fact, the teaching of physiology, 

 and the teaching of the physics and the chemistry 

 which bear upon it, must necessarily be in a state 

 of relative imperfection ; and there is nothing to be 

 grumbled at in the fact that this relative imperfection 



