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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVII. No. 



making of post-mortem examinations, stud- 

 ies the changes in form, consistence and 

 color of organs in disease, and under the 

 microscope investigates the finer changes 

 in the cells and intercellular substances in 

 pathological states. In the better labora- 

 tories of this sort, too, he has the oppor- 

 tunity of witnessing the phenomena of life 

 as manifested under abnormal conditions, 

 and though pathological physiology as such 

 has not yet reached the place in our med- 

 ical schools which it seems destined to oc- 

 cupy, it is rapidly being developed and 

 promises to become in the near future one 

 of the most important features of under- 

 graduate medical instruction. In the bac- 

 teriological laboratory the stucj^ent not only 

 hears of bacteria and of their relations to 

 fermentation and to disease, but he handles 

 these bacteria himself, studies them, alive 

 and dead, under an oil immersion lens, grows 

 them artificially upon media prepared by 

 himself, produces certain of the infectious 

 diseases experimentally by inoculation of 

 animals, and recovers from the bodies of 

 the diseased the same microorganisms which 

 he has inoculated. He is given, too, a prac- 

 tical acquaintance with the simpler meth- 

 ods of studying the phenomena of im- 

 munity, and gains in this way a unique 

 conception of the nature of infection and 

 the tendency of self-limitation of the infec- 

 tious diseases ; he becomes familiar with the 

 fundamental principles of contagion on the 

 one hand and of prevention on the other. 

 These studies, together with those which he 

 makes in the laboratory of hygiene, pre- 

 pare him, in a way tmequaled by any other 

 form of preparation, for meeting those 

 problems of personal hygiene and public 

 safety which confront the medical man in 

 private practise and in the protection of 

 the public health. In the laboratory of 

 physiological chemistry the medical stu- 

 dent perfects his methods of chemical 

 manipulation and examines for himself the 



various chemical constituents of the human 

 body and its secretions and excretions. 

 One needs no special prophetic instinct to 

 recognize how important a training of this 

 kind is for the prospective physician who 

 win wish to keep abreast of medical ad- 

 vance during the next two decades, for 

 there seems to be but little doubt in the 

 minds of those best informed that the labo- 

 ratories of physiology and physiological 

 chemistry are to stand in much the same 

 important relation to medicine during the 

 next twenty years as that occupied by the 

 laboratories of pathology and bacteriology 

 since 1880. Furthermore, practical phar- 

 macological studies are now essential for 

 the medical student. The undergraduate 

 who in the pharmacological laboratory 

 studies the physiological effects of drugs by 

 actual observation of the effects produced 

 after administration to animals, making 

 accurate measurements by the precise 

 methods of physics and chemistry, will ac- 

 quire an insight into the possibilities and 

 limitations of treatment by drugs which 

 wiU protect him from a pessimistic nihilism 

 on the one hand, and, even more important, 

 from uncritical enthusiasm on the other. 

 The student thus trained will be less likely 

 to fall a prey to the proprietary medicine 

 manufacturer and the nostrum monger 

 than the physician who has obtained all his 

 knowledge concerning the action of drugs 

 from books, lectures or the circulars of 

 manufacturers. 



In the clinical laboratories associated 

 with the wards of the hospital the student 

 win be taught how to apply the knowledge 

 gained in all the laboratories just men- 

 tioned to the problems of diagnosis and 

 treatment as he actually meets them in his 

 study of patients in the hospital wards and 

 dispensaries. These hospital clinical labo- 

 ratories have only just begun their develop- 

 ment, and there are but few medical schools 

 which have made adequate provision for- 



