56 UNIVERSITIES: ACTUAL AND IDEAL. 



years, both foster-mother and child have grown so big, 

 that they threaten not only to crush one another, but 

 to press the very life out of the unhappy student who 

 enters the nursery ; to the great detriment of all three. 



I speak in the presence of those who know practically 

 what medical education is ; for I may assume that a 

 large proportion of my hearers are more or less advanced 

 students of medicine. I appeal to the most industrious 

 and conscientious among you, to those who are most 

 deeply penetrated with a sense of the extremely serious 

 responsibilities which attach to the calling of a medical 

 practitioner, when I ask whether, out of the four years 

 which you devote to your studies, you ought to spare 

 even so much as an hour for any work which does not 

 tend directly to fit you for your duties? 



Consider what that work is. Its foundation is a 

 sound and practical acquaintance with the structure of 

 the human organism, and with the modes and conditions 

 of its action in health. I say a sound and practical ac- 

 quaintance, to guard against the supposition that my in- 

 tention is to suggest that you ought all to be minute 

 anatomists and accomplished physiologists. The devo- 

 tion of your whole four years to Anatomy and Physi- 

 ology alone, would be totally insufficient to attain that 

 end. "What I mean is, the sort of practical, familiar, 

 finger-end knowledge which a watchmaker has of a 

 watch, and which you expect that craftsman, as an 

 honest man, to have, when you entrust a watch that 

 goes badly, to him. It is a kind of knowledge which 



