KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



Indeed, we must be specialists. Only a fool will think in a score or two of years 

 he can learn enough to doctor a whole man. Remember the German professor 

 who lamented on his death-bed that he had been fooling away his life by studying, 

 or attempting to study, the whole Greek alphabet. If he had another chance he 

 would devote his entire life to the study of the one letter " Iota." And remem- 

 ber what Dr. Holmes tells us of the professor at the breakfast table who had scat- 

 tered and wasted his energies by devoting them to a study of beetles. If he had 

 life to live over again he would devote his time to the study of the hind leg of 

 one class of beetles. One can sail around the world, .but in so doing nothing is 

 discovered. The ocean is only an empty desert. But cast your anchor. Let 

 down your bucket, and out of that bucket select one trembling drop of water and 

 put on your spectacles, Oh ! microscopist, and the heavens and the earth seem 

 to be open under your concentrated gaze. So we must be specialists because 

 we cannot successfully be generalists. The Bible says, " the eyes of the fool are 

 in the ends of the earth." So he sees nothing. The earth has no ends. The 

 eyes of the wise man will be at home selecting one thing from the infinite multiplic- 

 ity of nature and magnifying it by a concentrated attention until it becomes " the 

 deputy of the world." That is genius, and that faculty of absorption in one thing 

 makes the scientific man and the worthy scientific result. 



But while this much in favor of specialism must be conceded to the largeness 

 of the world, there is also a great truth on the obverse side. The specialist who 

 gives himself to one part of the body needs to form a partnership with other 

 specialists who give themselves to other parts of the body. The oculist needs to 

 be sympathetically joined to the aurist, for if the whole body were an eye, where 

 were the hearing ? and if the whole body were an ear, where were seeing ? Thus 

 specialties supplement and complement each other. But now the man is not all 

 body. He has something besides physical organs. 



The physical specialties need an ally. You want to take me into partner- 

 ship. Sana mens in sano corpore. We can hang out no shingle of a universal doc- 

 trine. We distrust the medicines that cure everything. But we can hang out a 

 broad sign, on which shall be written the names of the great firm of Dr. Corpus 

 and Dr. Mens. Drs. Corpus & Mens, Professors in the Institute of Humanity; 

 their partnership bodes great good to the future of humanity. 



And as between them there need be no jealousies. Is there any truth in the 

 sometimes slanderous affirmation that doctors have long coat-tails — that are easily 

 trodden upon — that they balance professional chips on their shoulders and are 

 jealous of their special prerogatives? I trust so. A man who is not sensitive to 

 the honor of his calling is not worthy of a place in it. A proper professional 

 dignity befits alike the doctor of medicine and of theology, I know a doctor of 

 medicine, who being recently called to attend upon an intelligent lady, was met 

 by the feminine caveat, " Doctor, you must stipulate that you will not give me 

 any quinine, morphine or calomel." The doctor, seeing with alarm the pharma- 

 ceutical ground thus rapidly narrowing under his feet, exclaimed with becoming 

 dignity, " Madam I am not going to take you into partnership with me in the 



