July 31, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



143 



the issue of July 10th, for there are many points 

 connected with this question of great practical 

 interest. I assume that Prof. Mall is speaking 

 of teaching anatomy to medical students. If I 

 am mistaken as to this, I have nothing but 

 praise for his methods ; but if he is speaking 

 of medical education it seems to me that he 

 puts himself out of court at once. He says : 

 " The object of the laboratory is to teach stu- 

 dents, to train investigators and to investigate. 

 Although the first mentioned requires the 

 greater portion of the instructor's time; its im- 

 portance is by no means as great as the second 

 and third." I submit that the first and most 

 important duty of a professor in a medical 

 school is to teach the students his branch in the 

 manner best fitted to their future needs as 

 practitioners of medicine. He must find time 

 for scientific research when he can, and it must 

 be subordinate to his teaching, and to his 

 teaching for a practical purpose. Prof. Mall is 

 very severe on the lecture system. He men- 

 tions that several professors, ' even ' of anat- 

 omy, declare that they learned nothing that 

 way. I wish my name to be added to the list ; 

 but I conceive the reason to be that I had no 

 lectures worth listening to. It seems to me 

 that there is a fallacy in calling the method 

 stupid because none of us would choose it for 

 himself were he a student. Of course, we would 

 choose to be the private students of some dis- 

 tinguished anatomist; but this is impossible 

 for all the members of a large class. Moreover, 

 as implied above, we professors of anatomy are 

 hardly fair representatives of the rank and file 

 of medical students, who are studying anatomy 

 as a means and not as an end. Again, I am 

 not sure precisely what is meant by 'lectures,' 

 as Prof. Mall admits that ' lectures with demon- 

 strations are certainly valuable — more valuable 

 than the lectures with text-books alone.' But 

 who does lecture with a text-book? It is true 

 that I have heard of a professor of anatomy 

 who gave his class a certain number of pages of 

 Gray learned by heart ; but what competent 

 man does not illustrate his lectures to the best 

 of his ability ? It is his duty to emphasize cer- 

 tain parts of his subject and to go lightly over 

 others, to point out the practical deductions, to 

 show what facts are for, what against, prevail- 



ing theories. If lectures are to be abolished 

 the professor might be abolished too were it 

 not necessary for him to lay out the course and 

 to see it carried out. In a large school the 

 teaching or guiding of small groups must of 

 necessity be left to assistants of varying learn- 

 ing and of vai'ying power of imparting it, and 

 were there no lectures the professor's influence 

 would be lost. There must be students of all 

 grades, and to my mind those who learn the 

 most from the lectures are the best ones. The 

 worst are hopeless anyway ; probably a little 

 more so in the laboratory covirse that they 

 neither understand nor appreciate. 



But, though I firmly believe in the anatom- 

 ical lecture, I believe in personal study, in 

 demonstration to small classes, and in close 

 supervision. I am developing these at Har- 

 vard as fast as I can. Prof. Mall's plan strikes 

 me as most admirable for the training of scien- 

 tists ; I do not believe in it even for good med- 

 ical students ; certainly I do not want to have 

 it implied that those who differ are behind the 

 times in matters of medical education. 



Thomas Dwight. 



Harvard Medical School. 



is not this country ripe enough to adopt 

 the metric system ? 



On reading in your issue of July 17, Prof. 

 Slosson's clear and cogent exhibition of the 

 present condition of Decimal Numeration in the 

 United States, I am impressed by the rapidity 

 with which a great change in the habits of 

 thought of our people has been brought about. 

 The paramount infiuence of the custom of 

 reckoning in dollars and cents is palpable ; it 

 first became universal on the disappearance 

 from circulation of the Spanish fractional coins 

 which were common during the first half of this 

 century. But beside that it is evident that the 

 change of usage from 'common ' fractions to deci- 

 mals has been due in some measure to the im- 

 proved general character of the school arith- 

 metics, faulty enough though many of these 

 books may still be. The change bears emphatic 

 witness to the efficacy of scientific methods of 

 teaching and to the good results which must 

 necessarily follow from the action and reaction 



