UNIVERSITIES : ACTUAL AND IDEAL. 59 



reasonably expected to know the "barbarous binomials" 

 applicable to snakes, snails, and slugs ; an amount of 

 information with which the general mind is usually com- 

 pletely satisfied. And there is a scientific superstition 

 that Physiology is largely aided by Comparative Anato- 

 my a superstition which, like most superstitions, once 

 had a grain of truth at bottom; but the grain has be- 

 come homoeopathic, since Physiology took its modern 

 experimental development, and became what it is now, 

 the application of the principles of Physics and Chemis- 

 try to the elucidation of the phenomena of life. 



I hold as strongly as any one can do, that the medical 

 practitioner ought to be a person of education and good 

 general culture ; but I also hold by the old theory of a 

 t Faculty, that a man should have his general culture 

 before he devotes himself to the special studies of that 

 Faculty ; and I venture to maintain, that, if the general 

 culture obtained in the Faculty of Arts were what it 

 ought to be, the student would have quite as much 

 knowledge of the fundamental principles of Physics, of 

 Chemistry, and of Biology, as he needs, before he com- 

 menced his special medical studies. 



Moreover, I would urge, that a thorough study of 

 Human Physiology is, in itself, an education broader 

 and more comprehensive than much that passes under 

 that name. There is no side of the intellect which it 

 does not call into play, no region of human knowledge 

 into which either its roots, or its branches, do not extend ; 

 like the Atlantic between the Old and the New Worlds, 



