Aug. 17, 1888.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



165 



natural philosophy — the very first step in the study of 

 the laws of matter, is still but very imperfectly recog- 

 nised. This great omission has arisen, no doubt, from 

 the fact that these laws were supposed to be taught, and 

 in a measure were taught, in connection with chemistry, 

 which, from its old hereditary relations with pharmacy 

 and the pursuit of the philosopher's stone and the elixir 

 of life, had from time immemorial a claim on the physician. 

 But when we consider how completely modern science 

 has demonstrated the subordination of living bodies and 

 physiological processes, not to a wholly detached set of 

 laws termed vital, but to all the most elementary laws of 

 matter ; and, further, the correlation of all the physical 

 forces throughout the universe, so that the living body 

 and its environment act and react on each other through- 

 out infinite space and time, it will be readily admitted, I 

 think, that some kind of systematised instruction in 

 physics, and not a mere elementary examination in 

 mechanics, should be an essential part of an education 

 with a view to the medical profession. 



But this leads me directly to the other difficulty, or 

 disadvantage, under which the Scottish universities have 

 hitherto laboured in endeavouring to restore to the heal- 

 ing art its ancient association with the study of Nature. 

 And this is by far the graver difficulty of the two, inas- 

 much as its rectification depends in no degree upon us or 

 upon any possible change in the medical curriculum, but 

 upon what amounts to a practical readjustment of the 

 entire edifice of general education. 



The evil to which I now refer, as some of you have 

 already no doubt perceived, is the extremely unprepared 

 state in which the minds of most boys and young men 

 are found at the time of their leaving school as 

 regards the most elementary truths and methods of 

 physical science, and of the observation of Nature. 

 It is now more than a quarter of a century since this 

 great defect in the English public schools attracted the 

 attention of a Royal Commission appointed in 1861, and 

 there is no reason to suppose that in Scotland, at the 

 time in question,the state of school education was in this re- 

 spect much better than in England. Evidence of the most 

 convincing kind was given in 1872 before another Royal 

 Commission to the effect that " the limitation of the exami- 

 nations (under this revised code) to the subjects of read- 

 ing, writing, and arithmetic unfortunately narrowed the 

 instruction given in the elementary schools ; and that 

 this change, together with the lower standard adopted in 

 the training and examination of pupil teachers and the 

 curtailment of the syllabus of the training colleges, exer- 

 cised a prejudicial effect on the education of the country." 

 I am well aware, indeed, that in Scotland, and even in 

 our own city of Glasgow, there are schools which have 

 already made some considerable advances in the 

 direction here indicated, and that in the old High 

 School of Glasgow, in particular there exists now a 

 chemical laboratory such as would do no discredit to 

 any university. But as regards the schools throughout 

 the country, the advance has been so slow that for a 

 long time to come our boys will leave their schools, 

 and our young men will continue to enter the 

 universities, in a state of great mental unfitness to 

 grasp even the most elementary ideas of physical science, 

 and therefore requiring more than ordinary care to en- 

 sure, at the very commencemeut of a medical education, 

 the preparation in physics which will shortly become all- 

 in-all to the true physician. 



I have Snow to ask your attention, for a very few 



minutes only, to a concluding topic, which I approach, 

 indeed, not without fear and trembling, but which is of 

 too much prominence and importance in itself, in con- 

 nexion with the subject of this address, to allow of my 

 passing it by without some reference. 



Probably there may be some of you here present who 

 have been led to take note of a proverb, which I am 

 bound to say I have not been able to trace to its source, 

 but which I suspect to have been the growth of that 

 mediaeval period to which allusion has already been 

 made in the course of this address : " Ubi tres medici, 

 duo athei." I am not concerned in tracing out for you, 

 even if I were able to do so, the most probable origin 

 of this defamatory saying, nor shall I spend many 

 words in venting my honest indignation upon it as 

 a calumny and a reproach. It will be wiser and 

 more profitable in every way to take it as it stands — as 

 an example of what the late Earl Russell said of proverbs 

 in general — " the wisdom (or in some cases the foolish- 

 ness) of many," accentuated and condensed into a telling 

 phrase by " the wit of one." From this point of view it 

 may be that there is something more or less worthy of 

 careful reflection in this proverb, even if we should dis- 

 own it in its literal acceptation. But I need scarcely say 

 to those who are at all conversant with philosophical 

 studies, that to have been accused of atheism in the 

 middle ages may be quite the reverse of a real reproach 

 to any man or set of men. From the time of Socrates 

 downwards, indeed, this reproach has been a part of the 

 stock-in-trade of vindictive, even if sincere, ignorance 

 and bigotry all over the world ; and to have been tabooed 

 with atheism is often, almost without qualification, a pass- 

 port into the ranks of those who have kept alive the 

 flame of the human spirit, tending, and often vainly 

 struggling upwards, to escape from the jargon of scholas- 

 tic controversies and the mephitic vapours of ecclesiastical 

 strife. From this point of view it was inevitable — nay, 

 it was essential — that the physician or naturalist, in so 

 far as he really was or aimed at becoming such, 

 should incur this reproach. The marvel rather is, to 

 us of this nineteenth century, that those who incurred 

 it should have done so little to deserve it. The 

 reproach from a philosophical point of view, inconsistent 

 with atheism, but not seldom conjoined with it, of tam- 

 pering in an evil sense with magic was sure to be 

 launched in those days at men who professed to be suc- 

 cessfully investigating the secreta natum by other than 

 the most orthodox methods. And the prosecution and 

 imprisonment of Roger Bacon on the one side and of 

 Galileo on the other, not to speak of the numerous 

 " martyrs of science " both before and after these, will 

 remain as an imperishable record of the blind and im- 

 practicable spirit of mediaeval dogmatism, which, cover- 

 ing itself with the mantle of religion, stood athwart 

 the path of the physician for hundreds of years. 

 But although the condemnation on the side of 

 godlessness came most easily and naturally out of 

 the mouths of ecclesiastics, it is not by any 

 means to be inferred that, either in ancient or 

 modern times, it has been confined to them. Even 

 in the kindly and thoroughly human word-picture 

 drawn for us by Chaucer, of the typical " Doctour of 

 Physike," in the Prologue to the " Canterbury Tales," 

 line 440, it comes out that while — 



' ' Wei knew he the old Esculapius, 

 And Dioscorides and eke Rufus, 

 Old Hippocras, Hali, and Gallien, 

 Serapion, Rasis, and Avicen, 



