712 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. No. 517. 



On the other hand, in this country at all 

 events, there is heard a common cry that 

 the academic medical training is extending 

 on the other side into years which should 

 be given to practise; that the expense and 

 duration of a medical education so-called 

 win soon be such as to shut out from the 

 profession many a man who might be a 

 useful physician and perhaps a valuable 

 contributor to the world's knowledge. To 

 remedy this it is advised that the prospect- 

 ive student of medicine should be led from 

 the earliest stages of his training through 

 the paths of exact research into the domain 

 of the natural sciences to the greater or 

 less exclusion of the classics— the old-time 

 himianities, the study of which, useful as 

 it may be from a standpoint of general 

 mental training, is believed by many to be 

 time wasted in the education of the student 

 destined for a scientific career. 



But there are not wanting voices which 

 question the wisdom of the full extent of 

 some modern tendencies. May the affecta- 

 tion of too strict an objectivity bred though 

 it may be of a wholesome skepticism, the 

 more general cultivation of the natural 

 sciences to the exclusion of the humanities, 

 the search for facts and facts alone, cir- 

 cumscribe the powers of synthetical reason- 

 ing without which the true meaning of 

 many an important problem might pass 

 unnoticed? May they, perhaps, tend to 

 smother the development of minds capable 

 of grasping large general problems? Do 

 the tendencies of the times justify the epi- 

 grammatic observation of a recent French 

 author: "Autrefois on generalisait avec 

 peu de faits et beaucoup d'idees; mainten- 

 ant on generalise avec beaucoup de faits et 

 peu d'idees"?* 



That the cultivation of a strict object- 

 ivity in research has materially impaired 

 our powers of reason— that the exact meth- 



* Eymin,. ■' Medecins et philosophes,' 8°, Lyon, 

 1903-4, No. IV. 



ods which are largely responsible for the 

 enormous advances of the last fifty years 

 in aU branches of medicine have bred a 

 paucity of ideas, I am not inclined to be- 

 lieve, despite the seductive formula of our 

 Gallic colleague. But that when, in the 

 period of so-called secondary education, it 

 is proposed to substitute the study of the 

 natural sciences for a good training in the 

 humanities, there is danger of drying up 

 some of the sources from which this very 

 scientific expansion has sprung, seems to 

 me by no means impossible. The study of 

 the classics, an acquaintance with the 

 thoughts and the philosophies of past ages, 

 gives to the student a certain breadth of 

 conception, a stability of mind which is 

 difficult to obtain in another way. A 

 familiarity with Greek and Latin literature 

 is an accomplishment which means much 

 to the man who would devote himself to 

 any branch of art or science or history. 

 One may search long among the truly great 

 names in medicine for one whose training 

 has been devoid of this vital link between 

 the far-reaching radicles of the past and 

 what we are pleased to regard as the flower- 

 ing branches of to-day. Greek and Latin 

 are far from dead languages to the conti- 

 nental student. They are dead to us be- 

 cause they are taught us as dead. With 

 methods of teaching in our secondary 

 schools equal to those prevailing in Eng- 

 land and the continent, 'twould be an easy 

 matter, in a materially shorter period, to 

 give our boys an infinitely broader educa- 

 tion than they now receive. There should 

 be much less complaint of time wasted, 

 much less ground for suggesting the aban- 

 donment of the study of branches which 

 are invaluable to any scholarly-minded 

 man. 



The assertion that the time spent in the- 

 study of the humanities results, in the end, 

 in the encroachment of the academic train- 

 ing upon a period which should properly 



