September 6, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



369 



example, concerning the digestion of the 

 starches and the proteids, and the student 

 almost expects to separate and recognize 

 the half dozen or more beautiful products 

 lying between corn starch and malt sugar, 

 or the different hemis and antis, pros and 

 paras in the still more complicated proteid 

 family. " The teacher who is not himself an 

 investigator is but too ready to become an 

 idealist, and to present all these intri- 

 cate details in systematic tables and dia- 

 grams as he thinks they ought to be, and 

 perhaps are, rather than as the original ex- 

 perimenters have actually been able to find 

 them. The student must be warned against 

 this, and not the least valuable function of 

 the laboratory work in physiological chem- 

 istry in my judgment is to show him the 

 inherent difficulties in much of our research 

 work. An honest recognition of limitations 

 will guard him against many future mis- 

 takes, against the preposterous analyses, 

 lor example, made by many young medical 

 men while serving as hospital internes or 

 in other capacity. I said a moment ago 

 that there is much which may be easily 

 and accurately learned in physiological 

 chemistry by the medical student. It is 

 evident that there is much more which in 

 the ordinary college course cannot be mas- 

 tered, and against pretended knowledge , 

 here the student cannot be too earnestly 

 warned. 



Physiological chemistry is in some insti- 

 tutions recognized as a distinct discipline, 

 independent of medicine. This is true of 

 the chair in several of the great European 

 universities, and of at least one of the 

 older American schools. Physiological 

 chemistry is thus presented as is general 

 biology or comparative anatomy. But in 

 the great majority of cases it is looked upon 

 as forming a part of medical rather than of 

 general discipline, and doubtless for years 

 to come the medical school will have many 

 advantages in properly presenting the work. 



Inasmuch as no small part of the material 

 employed in the laboratory demonstrations 

 in the later parts of the course must be 

 drawn from hospitals and clinics, it would 

 seem that the effort sometimes made by 

 other schools to give the equivalent of the 

 medical school's work in this field must be 

 in part futile. I am forced to the conclu- 

 sion, from several practical considerations, 

 that the student of medicine should not as 

 a rule attempt to take physiological chem- 

 istry as a preliminary study outside the 

 medical college. There is generally some- 

 thing lacking in such courses which the 

 student recognizes often only after it is too 

 late to recover lost ground. 



Occasionally the work in physiological 

 chemistry is given as a part of the course 

 in physiology, but this, I believe, is a mis- 

 take, as the study is often curtailed to a 

 consideration of a few physiological prob- 

 lems instead of being treated as an inde- 

 pendent science of broad dimensions. With 

 the present rapid expansion of this field of 

 effort, the w^ork calls for the attention of the 

 specialist in chemistry rather than in physi- 

 ology. This is necessarily true with respect 

 to research study, and it is becoming equally 

 true as regards the matter of proper di- 

 dactic presentation. Much of the valuable 

 pioneer investigation in physiological chem- 

 istry was done by physiologists, but in its 

 later development the chemist alone can 

 be expected to follow the accumulating 

 mass of detail, and to sift out that which i§ 

 of permanent value. It requires often rare 

 judgment to decide how much of the newer 

 knowledge is suitable for laboratory or class 

 study, for no one wants to burden the al- 

 ready overtaxed student with a load of pre- 

 mature generalizations. While much of 

 the latest work is always interesting to the 

 specialist, it may often be quite unimpor- 

 tant to the student, and where to draw the 

 proper line of separation between the new 

 and the old calls for the teacher's maturest 



