PHYSIOLOGY IN THE STUDY OF DISEASE 81 



that training which is all-important in his practical 

 work. This failure on the part of the physiological 

 teacher has been recently emphasised in the 

 British Medical Journal and elsewhere. 



But I venture to think that not infrequently 

 the fault lies not with the physiological teacher 

 but with the hospital physician under whom the 

 student finds himself. The physician, after an 

 inadequate study of the science of physiology in the 

 remote past, may have lost all touch and all 

 sympathy with the science of to-day, may have sunk 

 into an easy empiricism, and may be content to 

 cloak his ignorance by sneers at the application of 

 scientific methods to practice. 



Such an influence on students is most pre- 

 judicial, tending as it does to obliterate the training 

 in scientific methods of study which they have 

 acquired in their earlier years. 



Reform is needed in the physiological teacher 

 on the one hand, and in the hospital physician on 

 the other. The one must keep the object of his 

 training of medical students constantly before 

 him ; the other must keep in touch with the 

 growing science of physiology, and must welcome 

 all applications of physiological methods to his work. 



What is wanted is some one who can show 

 them how these scientific methods are to be 

 carried into practice at the bedside, some one 

 who will keep before the students the necessity 



Q 



