3 E. A. Schäfer, 



science which deals with life and the processes of the living body which 

 should form, both for surgeon and physician, the foundation of their 

 training. It is infinitely more important that the principles of physio- 

 logy should be learned thoroughly and practically, than that the student 

 should be crammed with dry anatomical details, many of them of no 

 possible application, and most of which are often forgotten after the 

 examination in far less time than they have taken to acquire. I sup- 

 pose I was myself at one time as well stuffed with those dry bones of 

 anatomical learning as other students. I should be sorry now to con- 

 fess how little has been retained. And how many must there not be 

 whose experience would corroborate mine? 



Instead of this absurd disproportion in the amount of time wliich 

 is given up to physiology as compared with anatomy, I would have 

 the student devote at least half his time during the first winter to 

 physiology, leaving the other half to anatomy. An elementary course 

 of lectures should be accompanied by practical work in a laboratory, 

 and supplemented by tutorial instruction. The physiological labora- 

 tory — not the research laboratory, but a teaching department — 

 should take the same place with regard to physiology that the dis- 

 secting-room does to anatomy. Each student should have his own 

 place, and should be expected to spend a certain number of hours 

 each day there. 



No doubt, the carrying out of such a plan would entail a large 

 amount of trouble and expense. The room which in most medical 

 schools is dignified by the designation of physiological laboratory would 

 be entirely inadequate for the purpose; and the building of a proper 

 laboratory, and the furnishing of it with a sufficient amount of appa- 

 ratus, would involve an outlay from the mention of which the governing 

 bodies of most medical schools would shrink in dismay. Even in this 

 College, which already possesses a laboratory sufficiently large and 

 conveniently arranged for purposes of research, and for the present 

 exigencies of teaching, we should require large additional space, and 

 u very huge amount of additional apparatus. At present, what is 

 called practical physiology is, for the ordinary student, nothing but 

 practical histology, often nothing but the examination of microscopical 

 peci mens, with a little practical chemistry thrown in. Here, and in 



