12 E. À. Schäfer, 



hospital can do him no good whatever, so far as I can see, they are 

 able to effect a vast amount of harm. Not only do they take him 

 away from his legitimate work at anatomy and physiology, which, God 

 knows, demand time and labour enough and to spare, but they incul- 

 cate the habit of idling about in an aimless manner, a habit which, 

 when once acquired, is rarely got rid of, and, in many cases, leads 

 too easily to the tavern billiard -table, and the pursuits which follow 

 from this. Facilis descensus Averni. 



But when once physiology and anatomy are mastered, and the 

 examinations in these subjects are left behind, then, by all means, let 

 the student throw himself, heart and soul, into his hospital- work. Let 

 liim apply his newly acquired knowledge to the cases that come under 

 his notice, and he will find that every case will add something to the 

 store of information which must be accumulated before he can himself 

 enter, on his own responsibility, upon the active duties of his pro- 

 fession. I would suggest that, during this second summer, the student 

 would be more usefully employed in acquiring a general insight into 

 both the medical and the surgical practice of the hospital, than in at 

 once devoting 'himself exclusively to the one or the other branch of 

 medical science. Such an insight will the better enable him to follow 

 the regular courses of instruction in medicine, surgery, pathology, and 

 therapeutics, which, from this time, and during the next two years, 

 will, in addition to his hospital -work, occupy his chief attention. 



Now, I think, is the best and most convenient time also for the 

 courses ol pathology and pharmacology to come in. Both of these 

 subjects require and presuppose a knowledge of physiology, and one 

 of them, namely, pathology, also demands a fairly accurate knowledge 

 of normal anatomy and histology; and the fresher these sciences are 

 in the mind the better. But I would venture to assert that the nie- 

 llimi of teaching both pathology and pharmacology ought to be very 

 different from what, in this country, is considered sufficient, Amazing 

 as it may sound to a continental reader, there is not a genuine patho- 

 logical laboratory attached to a single medical school in this great 

 metropolis. They do not even, as in the caso of physiology, pretend 

 to pò se one. The only pathological laboratory that I know of in 

 London i thai belonging to the Brown Institution, which institution, 



