November 27, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



681 



I have said enough to remind us how 

 interlocked with science medicine has be- 

 come. She is applying sciences to her own 

 problems, and they form a vast capital fund 

 from which she can draw wealth. To give 

 instruction in this part of medicine, to turn 

 out men trained in it, is now one of the 

 duties of a medical school. The earnest 

 student has a right to expect such training 

 from his alma mater. But for it the re- 

 quirements are importantly different from 

 those that suffice as an introduction to 

 empiric medicine. In the first place, as 

 Pasteur said, we can not have the fruit 

 without the tree. For scientific medicine 

 the student must, perforce, be thoroughly 

 trained in his sciences before he can i-eally 

 grasp instruction or truly profit from his 

 medical teaching. One of the aims of his 

 instruction in empiric medicine is to teach 

 him to observe for himself; so in his in- 

 struction in scientific medicine, one of its 

 aims is to enable him to apply science for 

 himself. How small a fraction of all the 

 realities of medical practise can be met in 

 the few years of preparation of the student 

 in the clinic as he passes through it in his 

 school career! His teacher knows that 

 well, and uses the eases there as types 

 whereby the principles of medicine can be 

 fixed as a beginning. The rest must be ac- 

 complished by the man himself, as his life's 

 work. It is necessary that the student go 

 forth from his school equipped not only 

 with the present applications of science to 

 disea.se, but so possessed of root principles 

 of the sciences adjunct to medicine that he 

 may grasp and intelligently use the fur- 

 ther developments of scientific medicine 

 after he is weaned from his instructors 

 and the school. That is a way to obtain 

 enlightened progress in professional prac- 

 tise. "What truer safeguard can a nian 

 have, alone it may be, and isolated from the 

 centers of knowledge, what truer safeguard 

 can he have against all the pseudo-scientific 



quackeries of the day, than some real 

 knowledge of the principles of the sciences, 

 along whose lines the discoveries of medi- 

 cine must develop ? 



Therefore it is that the burden of obli- 

 gation falls heavily nowatlays upon the 

 teaching resources of every faculty of medi- 

 cine worthy of the name. There is, in the 

 first place, the burden of increased intel- 

 lectual laboi'. Both for the learner and the 

 teacher is this true. To seize the proft'ered 

 assistance of these great and complex sci- 

 ences is not always easy. These studies 

 are more difiicult than those that were 

 needed once, and they take longer to ac- 

 quire. The mere instriunentariiun of mod- 

 ern chemistry and physics, as applied to 

 medicine, and of physiology and pathology, 

 and bacteriology, of itself suffices to bring 

 conviction of the increased difficulty and 

 longer training due for these studies now 

 preparatory to medicine. 



Further, these initiatory studies have 

 become vastly more costly than was all that 

 formerly was required. Experts have to 

 be found who can devote themselves heart 

 and soul and undividedly to their particu- 

 lar subject. Laboratories have to be 

 erected and equipped, and on a scale that 

 makes them a distinct feature of the mod- 

 ern world. Those that we see now here 

 are models of their kind : wise foresight has 

 planned them; public-spii'ited enterprise 

 has constructed them accordant with that 

 plan. Nor does the achievement end with 

 their erection. The laboratories and their 

 equipment are but the faetorj^ and the 

 plant; both fail in their pui-pose if they 

 halt for sustenance. And beyond that 

 the likeness does not go. The factory, 

 once started, if it be wanted, can expect 

 to pay, to support itself. Not so the labo- 

 ratory. The laboratory is both a school 

 of instruction and a school of thoiight. 

 Well, then, no higher instruction can be 

 expected unaided to pay the expenses it 



