On medical education. 7 



innumerable parasites that are liable to infest the human frame, or to 

 follow the development, and endeavour to stay the ravages, of the 

 many microscopic organisms which are instrumental in the production 

 ot disease? 



We next arrive at the period when the candidate becomes a me- 

 dical student in the ordinary acceptation of the term, the time, that 

 is, when he enters at a medical school attached to a recognised hos- 

 pital. It is universally acknowledged that, from that time to the time 

 when the complete qualification is obtained, four years is the very 

 shortest period that must be devoted to the more special departments 

 of medical education. We have, then, to consider how this period may 

 best be allotted. 



I would have the first year given up to elementary physiology, 

 histology, elementary anatomy, and materia medica. I would have all 

 these subjects taught more by practical work than by means of lectures, 

 chiefly using the latter to furnish an explanatory accompaniment to 

 the work of the laboratory and dissecting room. The difficulty of 

 making instruction, especially in physiology, more practical, which arises 

 from the amount of time which such practical work would necessitate, 

 is in great measure obviated if we determine to relegate the study of 

 the preliminary sciences to an antecedent year, for this would at once 

 enable the student to devote almost the whole of his time during the 

 first two years after registration to anatomy and physiology. 



In considering the relative apportionment of time to each of these 

 two subjects, we must take into account their relative importance to 

 the student of medicine. The arrangement of time which at present 

 obtains is apparently based upon the assumption that anatomy is the 

 foundation upon which all the superstructure of medical and surgical 

 science is reared, whilst physiology is of comparatively little conse- 

 quence to the future surgeon and physician, and requires comparatively 

 little effort to master, and needs, therefore, an expenditure of not more 

 than one -sixth the time which is claimed for anatomy. This assumption 

 could only be justified if the object of medical education were to pro- 

 vide physicians, not for the living, but for the dead. But since it is 

 life, and the problems presented by the living body in health and in 

 disease, that both surgeon and physician must encounter, it is the 



