312 ON MEDICAL EDUCATION xn 



to study the nature of the works of the human 

 watch, and the next thing was to study the way 

 the parts worked together, and the way the watch 

 worked. Thus, by degrees, we have had growing 

 up our body of anatomists, or knowers of the con- 

 struction of the human watch, and our physiolo- 

 gists, who know how the 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 theoreti- 

 cal 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. Whatever tends to affect the teach- 

 ing of them injuriously must tend to destroy and 

 to disorganise the whole fabric of the medical art. I 

 think every sensible man has seen this long ago ; 



