UNIVERSITIES: ACTUAL AND IDEAL. 57 



is to be acquired, not in the lecture-room, nor in the 

 library, but in the dissecting-room and the laboratory. 

 It is to be had, not by sharing your attention between 

 these and sundry other subjects, but by concentrating 

 your minds, week after week, and month after month, 

 six or seven hours a day, upon all the complexities of 

 organ and function, until each of the greater truths 

 of anatomy and physiology has become an organic part 

 of your minds until you would know them if you 

 were roused and questioned in the middle of the night, 

 as a man knows the geography of his native place and 

 the daily life of his home. That is the sort of knowl- 

 edge which, once obtained, is a life-long possession. 

 Other occupations may fill your minds it may grow 

 dim, and seem to be forgotten but there it is, like the 

 inscription on a battered and defaced coin, which comes 

 out when you warm it. 



If I had the power to remodel Medical Education 

 the first two years of the medical curriculum should be 

 devoted to nothing but such thorough study of Anatomy 

 and Physiology, with Physiological Chemistry and Phys- 

 ics ; the student should then pass a real, practical exam- 

 ination in these subjects ; and, having gone through that 

 ordeal satisfactorily, he should be troubled no more with 

 them. His whole mind should then be given with equal 

 intentness, to Therapeutics, in its broadest sense, to 

 Practical Medicine and to Surgery, with instruction in 

 Hygiene and in Medical Jurisprudence ; and of these 

 subjects only surely there are enough of them should 



;ion, 



