54 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXV. No. 628 



ing the natural sciences have often been 

 unsatisfactory and have, therefore, yielded 

 unsatisfactory results. The subject is one 

 for serious consideration, to which many of 

 our teachers are, I think, alive, and it is a 

 satisfaction to announce that the council 

 at its meeting this morning, in response 

 to a wide-spread and influential demand, 

 recommended the formation of a new sec- 

 tion of this association to be called the 'sec- 

 tion on education,' which, we may hope, 

 will contribute to the best methods of teach- 

 ing the sciences. 



It may also be admitted that exaggerated 

 claims have sometimes been made as re- 

 gards the position which the natural sci- 

 ences should hold in the scheme of general 

 education and as regards the extent and 

 kind of mental discipline, culture and 

 knowledge which, when pursued in such a 

 scheme, they are capable of imparting. 

 Without attempting to assign to these sci- 

 ences their exact share in a plan of liberal 

 education, and this share, I need hardly 

 say, I deem an important one, I should be 

 sorry to see eliminated from the education 

 of even those looking forward to scientific 

 pursuits the study of the languages, history 

 and philosophy, which give a culture not to 

 be derived solely from the study of the 

 natural sciences and which should add 

 greatly to the intellectual pleasure, satis- 

 faction, breadth of vision and even effi- 

 ciency of the man of science. Natural 

 science should take its place in a plan of 

 liberal education by the side of the older 

 learning, the so-called humanities; each 

 affords a kind of culture not to be obtained 

 from the other, and any scheme of higher 

 education which does not recognize the 

 equal value of both kinds of culture is one- 

 sided. 



The full recognition of the part thus as- 

 signed to natural science in liberal educa- 

 tion requires an adjustment on the part of 

 the exclusive advocates of the traditional 



system handed down from the middle ages 

 to new ideals of what constitutes liberal 

 training, but in this field science has won 

 its victory and wiU not be dislodged. It is, 

 however, not enough to be content with this 

 victory. Science should see to it that in its 

 own field it becomes an instrument of edu- 

 cation certainly not less powerful than the 

 older humanities, and President Butler has. 

 very properly urged the need of improve- 

 ments in this direction. 



Standing here, as I do, as a representa- 

 tive of medicine in an association devoted 

 to all the sciences of nature the relation of 

 medicine to general science comes promi- 

 nently to my mind. Medicine has been 

 called the mother of the sciences. There- 

 was a time when the leading cultivators of 

 natural science were physicians and when 

 the medical faculties of universities were 

 the homes of about all the science that then 

 existed. In subsequent history physicians- 

 have played no small part in the develop- 

 ment of the natural and physical sciences. 

 Such important contributors to physical 

 science as Black, Toung, Mayer and Helm- 

 holtz were all actively identified with the 

 medical profession, and are important fig- 

 ures in the history of medicine as well as- 

 of physics. From the study of chemical 

 and physical phenomena of living animals^ 

 and of man, whether by chemists, by physi- 

 cists or by physicians, have come important 

 additions to the sciences of chemistry and 

 of physics, and medicine is constantly find- 

 ing new and important applications of 

 chemical and physical discoveries. "We 

 realize to-day as never before the funda- 

 mental unity of the biological sciences, and 

 answers to the deepest and most far-reach- 

 ing problems of medicine, not less than of 

 other biological sciences, are to be sought 

 in the properties of living matter, wherever 

 it exists, whether in plants or in animals 

 or in man. 



Medicine has during the past half cen- 



