456 



NA TURE 



[Oct. 8, 1874 



was broken or injured, and thus be able to set it right. 

 Now, the human body is a machinery which, in com- 

 plexity, stands to the spinning jenny in the same relation 

 as the spinning jenny stands to a child's windmill. But 

 it stands by the same laws, and those who have to deal 

 with it must be guided by the same reasoning. Sickness 

 is the going wrong of the machinery. Death is the 

 destruction of part of the machinery, and the only way 

 in which that machinery can be set right, if it goes wrong, 

 is not by sitting down and hoping for it, and it is not by 

 sending for the first blacksmith who will administer his 

 purge here and his bleeding there, and who is what we 

 call a ' quack.' 1 mean a person who is really ignorant 

 of that with which he is dealing, and who yet, neverthe- 

 less, presumes to meddle with it. That is the essence of 

 quackery. Or, thirdly, we must send our skilled engineer, 

 who, by the help of what he calls symptoms, finds out 

 what wheel is out of place, what cog is broken, and by his 

 previous knowledge of therapeutics knows in what way it 

 is possible to get this erring wheel or broken pinion into 

 its place again. And it is in order that we may have such 

 skilled engineers to the body that all this great apparatus 

 which you see erected here, and all this long period of study 

 is carried out. I do not know anything which strikes me 

 more forcibly than the progress which this kind of know- 

 ledge has made within the last tliirty or forty years. . . . 

 I happened to take up to-day the syllabus of your ses- 

 sional work here, and 1 turn, not unnaturally, to the class 

 of Practical Physiology and Histology, and on looking 

 over the various doings of this course of instruction, it 

 struck me that thirty years ago, when I began my medical 

 studies, there certainly was nobody in London — nay, 

 nobody in the world — who could have given you this 

 course of instruction. We had not the instruments which 

 are necessary to carry it out. The whole course of 

 medical study since that time has been completely 

 changed — in the first place, by discoveries made by the 

 use of the microscope, and, in the second place, by that 

 application of delicate instruments to the illustration of 

 the mechanism of tlie body, which is the very essence 

 and a great part of modern physiology. At that time even 

 organic chemistry was hardly in existence. It is this 

 recognition of the fact that the study of life is essen- 

 tially a question of applied physics and chemistry 

 which has changed the whole course of our medical 

 studies. It is that which makes elaborate appliances 

 necessary. 



The main question raised by Prof. Huxley in these 

 remarks is, in our opinion, really this : Are we in the 

 future to mass our Faculties as they are massed [in 

 Germany, or are we to separate them as they are sepa- 

 rated in France? 



The altogether glorious mental activity of the Germans 

 in the present century is undoubtedly due to the com- 

 mingling of the teaching'of the various Faculties, and to 

 the University teaching universally available. In Ger- 

 many it may be said that there are no provincial institu- 

 tions, for the smallest universities are modelled on the 

 largest, and are as perfect, so far as they go. The 

 metropolis is thus carried into the provinces. 



Contrast this with the condition of things in France, 

 with its single University and special scientific schools, 

 and where outside Paris there is no institution, so far as 

 we are aware, where all the Faculties exist side by side, 

 and are conducted with equal vigour. Medical F.aculty 

 here. Law Faculty there. Arts Faculty somewhere else, 

 and Science Faculty again in another region ; such is 

 the condition which is now beingj severely criticised by 

 many of the best minds in France. But it must be 

 remembered that while the whole of France besides 



Paris is so lamentably provincial, in Paris itself there are 

 facilities for advancing and dis tributing knowledge which 

 put London plus Oxford and Cambridge to shame. 



In provincial England we fear it may be said with too 

 much truth that we are at the present moment behind 

 France. It is clear that in Owens College we have an in- 

 stitution which will correct the existing condition of things 

 on the German plan ; in such institutions as the York- 

 shire College of Science we have attempts to correct it on 

 the French plan, a plan condemned utterly by the most 

 far-seeing men in France itself ; while we have not in 

 England the corrective supplied by Paris, considered as 

 a vast centre of teaching and research. 



We are glad that Prof. Huxley has called attention to 

 the importance of the step taken by Manchester, and has 

 so clearly stated his idea of the right thing to be done for 

 the advancement of the higher education. 



Nor did he neglect to point out the intimate connec- 

 tion that must exist between this and the secondary edu- 

 cation before any real progress can be made :— " You who 

 commence your medical studies should come prepared 

 with the outlines of physics and chemistry as your founda- 

 tions. One of the great reasons of the backwardness of 

 medical study is that those who come to study are, by 

 reason of the lamentable defects of their common school 

 education, utterly unprovided with a knowledge of what 

 those physical studies mean. I wish to stamp upon your 

 minds, as firmly and as strongly as it is burnt into my 

 own, that all these appliances and all these mechanical 

 aids for the study of medicine are simply thrown away 

 unless they have the foundation of human hard work 

 and clearheadedness to go upon." 



Still another point of the most vital importance to the 

 future progress of Science in this country was touched 

 upon ; we refer to Prof. Huxley's statement of opinion as 

 to the importance of the Research Scholarships established 

 at Owens College : — 



" 1 notice in these donations and in these sums of money 

 subscribed for the purpose of building and endowing and 

 providing with scholarships this great institution, what 

 appears to me to be a peculiar feature ; at least I know 

 nothing exactly like it anywhere else : and as it appears 

 to me to be a feature of great importance and one which 

 it is desirable to iinitate as fast as possible by other 

 educational bodies, you will pardon me if I dilate upon 

 it for a short time. You have two scholarships which 

 differ from the ordinary scholarships in this, that they 

 are rewards not merely for learning, and not merely 

 for careful attention and diligent study of that which 

 the student may learn in the lecture-room or from 

 books, but they are rewards which are given to those 

 who exhibit in some degree that most valuable and 

 most important of all intellectual gifts, the power of 

 advancing truth by the pursuit of original rese.arch. I 

 refer to the Dalton Scholarship and the Piatt Scholar- 

 ship. I can conceive no object more important at the 

 present time than that of encouraging original research in 

 science, and the way of doing it, without at the same time 

 doing more harm than good, is one which has coine very 

 seriously under my consideration .as one of the Royal 

 Commissioners for the Advancement of Science, and I 

 earnestly wish that we could look elsewhere to the solu- 

 tion of that problem by means analogous to those adopted 

 here — I mean to say by private benefactors coming for- 

 ward with their endowments, which endowments should 

 benefit those only who are eng.aged in original research. 

 The introduction of scholarships of this kind into the 



