774 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XI. No. 281. 



obligation, a purpose which is the under- 

 lying motive of all sociological effort. 



Coupled with this is the desire for a more 

 intimate knowledge of the purposes of living 

 as expressed in terms of accomplishment. 



In addition to these motives there is that 

 which comes from the possession of a truly 

 scientific spirit seeking the acquisition of 

 knowledge and the establishment to mental 

 vision, of a utilizable truth, with a view, 

 not to any individual aggrandi.zement, but 

 to the end of making this a stepping-stone 

 for further progress ; this sequence of stim- 

 ulation usually carrying with it the senti- 

 ment that the work done is a contribution 

 to the general welfare. 



In the very beginning of his studies the 

 medicalstudent is broughtinto investigatory 

 relationship with that which he has here- 

 tofore thought of as an entity, a being, a 

 mystery, and which, now put into his hands 

 for demolition, he finds to be a most won- 

 derful and delicately constructed machine, 

 in the studj^ of which he may be said to 

 pass through much the same process of 

 mental evolution as that attributed by Pro- 

 fessor Giddings to primitive man. * 



He is lost in marvel at the compact ar- 

 rangement of muscular tissues, regards, as 

 might the explorer of a buried citj', the sys- 

 tem of canals which carry quickening fluid 

 to the outermost circumvallation and of 

 drains into which are cast waste matters to 

 be discharged without the walls ; while the 

 glistening white lines of nerves sending 

 their branches in a network between mus- 

 cles and under and over canals and drains, 

 reveal to him the suggestion of a system for 

 the communication of intelligence and the 

 issuance of governing mandates to which 

 the combined telegraphic and telephonic 

 services of the greatest city built by human 

 hands have no comparison in relative ex- 

 tent or in. perfection. 



*F.H. Giddings, 'The Principles of Sociology,' 

 Antliropogenic AssociatioQ, p. 246. 



There is probably no point in his career 

 of so much initial portent as that in which 

 the student, in the dissecting-room, for the 

 first time lifts the wet sheet from a face that 

 he has never known, but behind which 

 there dwelt, and through which there have 

 been expressed, all that emotion and desire 

 can crowd into the compass of a human life ; 

 it is a period in which he either consecrates 

 himself or turns back ; if he be honest he 

 does one or the other ; if he be a pretender 

 he may, it is true, continue and complete 

 his medical school course and go out into 

 the broader school of work, but without the 

 consecration he will inevitably fail of his 

 highest possibilities as a phj^sician. 



The impress which is made by the study 

 of anatomy upon the truly thoughtful man 

 cannot but be emphasized in the physiolog- 

 ical laboratory, where the student learns 

 the values and uses of the different parts of 

 the human machine and finds the answers 

 to questions which the previous study of 

 the structure of the silent body have evoked. 



Here and in the associated laboratories 

 lie learns the chemical processes of the body 

 in health and disease, the supplementary 

 relationship of the different organs, the pro- 

 vision for their maintenance and repair, and 

 comes to recognize and to know the func- 

 tions of the microscopic organisms with 

 which the bodj' teems. 



Carrj'ing with him the lessons born of 

 research, he next passes into the wider 

 school of clinical teaching, and learns at the 

 bedside that he has to study something 

 more than the disease and that to render 

 the fullest meed of service as a physician 

 he must come to know, patiently, tenderly 

 and, in the broadest sense, sympathetically, 

 his brother man. 



Here, too, he learns that his own feelings 

 and emotions must be subordinated to the 

 one purpose of his greatest help efficiency ; 

 that here, as in all scientific work, his per- 

 sonal equation must be reduced to a mini- 



