6 E. A. Schäfer, 



Greek and Latin, and a thorough grounding in mathematics ; if he has 

 also been able to acquire a certain amount of proficiency in French 

 and German, so much the better. 



After leaving school, it should be obligatory upon every student 

 to devote at least one entire year to the study of those sciences — 

 physics, chemistry, and biology — which are immediately preliminary 

 to what are usually classed as the more strictly medical sciences. For 

 this purpose, he should go to some college — to Oxford or Cambridge, 

 University or King's, the Owens, the Firth, or the Mason — anywhere, 

 in short, where these sciences are thoroughly taught in properly pro- 

 vided laboratories and under recognised teachers. 



It is astonishing that not only the desirableness, but the absolute 

 necessity, of this preliminary scientific training has not long since been 

 insisted upon by those who have practically the direction of medical 

 education. To take a lad straight from school — or, perhaps, to allow 

 him first to waste a year or more bumping about on country roads in 

 a doctor's gig, under the idea that he is thereby acquiring an insight 

 into medical science — and to send him to study physiology, to say 

 nothing of pathology, without his having acquired even the most rudi- 

 mentary notions of chemistry, physics, and biology, is to compel him 

 to learn that subject without understanding it, to rob it of all the 

 interest it possesses, and is fatal to the future comprehension of the 

 physical and vital problems of medicine and surgery. 



From my own experience, which I am very sure could be corro- 

 borated by that of every other teacher of physiology, I can bear 

 ample testimony to the value of a previous training in the preliminary 

 sciences; and, if I could have my own way, I would insist upon every 

 intending student of medicine acquiring a competent and practical 

 knowledge of those sciences previously to presenting himself for regis- 

 tration. I have often heard students deplore the difficulties which they 

 have experienced in comprehending many of the facts of physiology 

 difficulties which have resulted solely from previous ignorance of the 

 simplest principles of chemistry and physics. And how is it possible 

 to expect a student, who has never been through a course of biology, 

 never investigated for himself the structure of a worm, nor seen a 

 bacterium, to pursue the changes and combat the ill-elfects of the 



