8 SCIENCE. 
work, he receives a degree, which attests his 
proficiency in his special science. Should 
the same young man elect to study one of 
the medical sciences, physiology, pathology 
or bacteriology, no university will give him 
corresponding recognition. The utmost he 
can find is opportunity for advanced work 
in his special subject, but with no university 
guidance, no plan of correlated studies, and 
he can look forward to no degree nor even 
to a certificate from the university. Must 
we not admit that here is a great omission 
in our university organization? Is it not 
a pressing duty to repair this omission? 
Surely to put these questions is to assent to 
them. 
We are thus brought to the conclusion 
that, though the primary function of our 
medical schools is to educate practitioners 
of medicine, yet they ought to assume now 
the further and higher function of training 
medical investigators. To succeed in this 
the medical laboratories must be expanded, 
their resources enlarged and the staff in- 
creased, so that the officers will have time 
and means for both researches of their own 
and for guiding the researches of advanced 
students. Yale has been teaching a needed 
lesson, for her laboratory of physiological 
chemistry has shown what splendid results 
ensue when one of the so-called medical 
sciences is set free and allowed to develop 
as the peer of other sciences. Untrammel 
them, strike off their bonds, and compara- 
tive morphology, comparative physiology 
and comparative pathology will develop and 
add to the good work and glory of your 
alma mater as physiological chemistry has 
already done. 
Laboratories are of very recent origin; 
seventy-five years ago there were none. 
There are but few laboratories which have 
stood for as much as twenty-five years. Our 
experience with them has not been long, 
but we have learned two things concerning 
them : that they are absolutely indispensa- 
[N. S. Vou. X. No. 236- 
ble and that they are very costly, so costly 
that a university has become an enterprise 
of great financial magnitude. Formerly a 
college with an endowment of a million dol- 
lars was wealthy; at: present a university 
with three thousand students and twenty 
millions dollars has to practice rigid econ- 
omy to keep running properly. We who 
are at work for universities are painfully 
conscious of needs, and it seems to me a 
common duty for us all to make known to 
the public, upon whose generosity Ameri- 
can higher education depends, the true 
scale of those needs. 
The requirements of comparative medi- 
cine call for more changes than we have yet 
mentioned. The very word comparative 
implies that animals shall be included in 
the range of study. It means that not only 
shall provision be made for investigating 
the structure of animals and for physiolog- 
ical experiments, but also for the observa- 
tion and treatment of sick animals, or, in 
other words, there ought to be a veterinary 
hospital in intimate association with the 
school of human medicine. Sucha hospital 
would increase the range of experience and 
contribute a broadening impulse to all med- 
ical work. It is, I believe, quite a new 
project to consolidate the interests of veter- 
inary and human medicine, but it is, by 
the initiative of President Eliot, under ac- 
tual consideration at Harvard, and will, if 
carried out, be an epoch-making advance. 
It will be a public and effectual assertion of 
the solidarity of all medical science and of 
all forms of medical practice. It will be a 
boon to pathological and clinical research, 
for it will offer opportunities for the study 
not only of diseases specially characteristic 
of animals (such as the distemper of dogs), 
but also of those diseases common to man 
and animals. We are thus brought round 
to still another aspect of the beneficence of 
medical consolidation, the future develop- 
ment of preventive medicine. 
