Apeil 17, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



607 



them. I have in another plaee^ called at- 

 tention to the great importance of these 

 laboratories for the training of medical 

 students as well as for the advance of prac- 

 tical medicine, and have tried to show that 

 it is just as necessary for physicians and 

 surgeons to have their own special labora- 

 tories attached to their wards, in which 

 chemical, physical, bacteriological and psy- 

 chic investigations can be made as it is for 

 aniline dye manufacturers to have chemical 

 laboratories attached to their plants for 

 solving their special problems, or for brew- 

 ers to have bacteriological laboratories and 

 skilled bacteriologists constantly at work 

 to maintain and improve the standard of 

 their products. It will not do for the sci- 

 ences of diagnosis and therapy to rely upon 

 the laboratories of chemistry, physiology 

 and pathology in the medical school to solve 

 their particular problems for them. The 

 more fundamental sciences have their own 

 problems of a more abstract nature which 

 it is their duty to investigate, and the time 

 has certainly come for diagnosis and ther- 

 apy to develop the laboratory sides of these 

 sciences for themselves. 



By far the greatest advantage of instruc- 

 tion of the medical student by the labora- 

 tory method is, however, his training in the 

 scientific habit of thought. What helps 

 him is less the facts which he learns, or the 

 memory of the experiments he makes, than 

 the establishment in him of the conception 

 that in order really to understand it is 

 necessary to come into direct personal eon- 

 tact with the object to be understood. If 

 some of his teachers are, and certainly some 

 of them should be, productive investigators, 

 he is likely to be impressed with the neces- 

 sity of accuracy in work, of patience in it, 

 if things are to be accomplished, of steady 



° Barker, L. F., " The Organization of the Labo- 

 ratories in the Medical Clinic of the Johns Hop- 

 kins Hospital," Johns Bopkins Hasp. Bull., June- 

 July, 1907. 



industry and persevering effort. He learns 

 also to have a love for detail and a desire 

 for complete and exhaustive knowledge ; he 

 comes to appreciate skill in invention and 

 in the application of new and precise meth- 

 ods, and there grows in him a desire for 

 full appreciation of the value of all exist- 

 ing methods or principles which will pre- 

 vent him from falling a prey to section- 

 alism in medicine or to any single idea or 

 principle which is limited in its nature. 

 In other words, he develops in those three 

 directions of thought which characterize 

 three more or less distinct and important 

 attitudes of the human mind; namely, the 

 exact habit or attitude of thought, the his- 

 torical and the critical. 



THE UTILIZATION OP LABORATORIES BY PRAC- 

 TITIONERS AND HEALTH OFFICERS FOR THE 

 DIAGNOSIS, CURE AND PREVENTION 

 OP DISEASE 



I have referred incidentally to the use 

 of hospital laboratories by hospital physi- 

 cians and surgeons as direct aids in the 

 diagnosis and treatment of their cases. 

 The chemical, physical, microscopical and 

 bacteriological studies now made in hospital 

 wards form a large part of the occupation 

 of resident and attending physicians in 

 those institutions ; indeed, the examinations 

 of the blood, of the urine, of the stomach 

 juice, of the sputum, of the fffices, of the 

 cerebro-spinal fluid, of the contents of ab- 

 scesses and cysts, of portions of tissue re- 

 moved at operation and X-ray and elec- 

 trical examinations have become so potent 

 a factor in medical diagnosis that many 

 have begun to fear that physicians and 

 medical students in their enthusiasm for 

 the clean-cut results which they yield may 

 come too much to neglect the older funda- 

 mental methods of inspection, palpation, 

 percussion, auscultation and mensuration. 

 And it is certainly wise that a note of 

 warning should in this connection be 



