July 26, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



135 



better than now lie is equipped. Again, 

 wlio could exaggerate the importance of the 

 habits in causing misery and in curing it? 

 And lastly, in these days sex is taking ever 

 more rapidly its proper place in the science 

 of ' things as they are,' monstrous often to 

 the layman, and properly, but to the physi- 

 cian natural and preeminently important. 

 A widely related discussion of such topics 

 as these, it seems to the present writer, 

 would furnish to a medical student of the 

 necessaiy mental development, facts and 

 relations as important for his professional 

 purpose as most of those which are at pres- 

 ent taught him. Such a course would do 

 much to supply the lack of knowledge of 

 man's dual nature, which, as has been suffi- 

 ciently suggested, usually obtains in the 

 average physician. This would be its chief 

 value in a medical curriculum, but not its 

 only one. It would also supply that need- 

 ful amount of psychology which would allow 

 the usual courses in psychiatry and neurol- 

 ogy to be better appreciated and more com- 

 pletely understood, especially of course as 

 concerns those conditions, such as hysteria, 

 neurasthenia, paranoia, dementia paralyt- 

 ica and the rest in which a purely ' men- 

 tal ' aspect is often or always prominent. 

 It would help to make such conditions 

 really understandable so far as their de- 

 scription at least is concerned, whereas at 

 present, the ideal disturbances, notably in 

 paranoia (very commonly met with), 

 are far beyond the understanding of 

 the medical student, for lack of acquain- 

 tance with the theory of normal idea- 

 tion. It would make such conditions 

 seem like scientific problems pressing for 

 his solution rather than like mere arbi- 

 trary sets of ill-understood events which 

 he must learn by rote and the mem- 

 ory of which, when occasion offers, he 

 must mechanically apply. 



In form such a subject might easily be 

 comprehended in a course of weekly lec- 



tures during the former half of the fourth 

 year of the medical curriculum, either elec- 

 tive or required. It need involve of course 

 no laboratory work, nor would this be fit- 

 ting, sufficient demonstrations being used to 

 illustrate certain points and to increase still 

 more the students' interest. 



It is not difficult to understand why 

 something of this sort has not already been 

 introduced, instruction which would im- 

 part the suitable product of the progress in 

 these directions in the last few years. The 

 progressive spirit of the various medical 

 faculties has been employed of late, for the 

 most part, in establishing departments of 

 bacteriology, pathology and experimental 

 physiology, and in enlarging various modes 

 of clinical experience. These have now in 

 all schools of the first class become flour- 

 ishing departments, demonstrating well 

 their importance. Thus other fields have 

 naturally been neglected in these new years 

 of the sciences of the bacteria. It seems 

 time now that the growing energy of the 

 medical schools should look around more 

 widely and realize, with practical benefit, 

 that if emotions cause at times disease 

 as well as the bacteria, so it is equally 

 important that the conditions of the 

 one should be taught the student as 

 well and as certainly as those of the 

 other. Not at once as a universal means 

 of progress will this enlarged and more 

 scientific mode of viewing every patient be 

 shown the student of the medical sciences, 

 but assuredly it will come, and in some 

 form not wholly unlike that which has here 

 been all too rudely sketched and for reasons 

 similar to those here pointed out. Such a 

 course by a psychologist of wide interests 

 and information among branches of learn- 

 ing of allied aims, a medical man if possi- 

 ble, would seem to be worthy at least of 

 trial in every medical school whose avowed 

 purpose it is to provide its graduates with 

 a knowledge of men as they are, and not 



