248 ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION ix 



few hours devoted to the examination of specimens 

 of such plants, and the desirableness of such 

 knowledge is no justification, to my mind, for 

 spending three months over the study of systematic 

 botany. Again, materia medica, so far as it is a 

 knowledge of drugs, is the business of the druggist. 

 In all other callings the necessity of the division of 

 labour is fully recognised, and it is absurd to require 

 of the medical man that he should not avail himself 

 of the special knowledge of those whose business 

 it is to deal in the drugs which he uses. It is all 

 very well that the physician should know that 

 castor oil comes from a plant, and castoreum from 

 an animal, and how they are to be prepared ; but 

 for all the practical purposes of his profession that 

 knowledge is not of one whit more value, has no 

 more relevancy, than the knowledge of how the 

 steel of his scalpel is made. 



All knowledge is good. It is impossible to say 

 that any fragment of knowledge, however insigni- 

 ficant or remote from one's ordinary pursuits, may 

 not some day be turned to account. But in medical 

 education, above all things, it is to be recollected 

 that, in order to know a little well, one must be 

 content to be ignorant of a great deal. 



Let it not be supposed that I am proposing to 

 narrow medical education, or, as the cry is, to lower 

 the standard of the profession. Depend upon it 

 there is only one way of really ennobling any call- 

 ing, and that is to make those who pursue it real 



