342 RECENT ADVANCES IN SCIENCE. 



of the company of apothecaries; but the main addition thus caused 

 would be a course of botany. 



Such a curriculum differs widely both in nature, extent, and order 

 from that in force at the present day. But I venture to think that if 

 we examine the conditions of the time, we shall find that the authorities 

 of that day were as wise as, possibly wiser than, we of to-day. In 

 judging' such matters as these, we and, perhaps, especially they who 

 would drive the student on into learning by the goad of compulsion, 

 must bear in mind that legislative enactments, such as those prescribing 

 a curriculum of study, always exhibit a long latent period,- they come 

 into visible existence long after the stimulus which begat them has 

 been applied, long alter the need of those things being done which the 

 enactments strive to do has been felt. So long, indeed, is the latent 

 period, that often new needs have arisen calling for yet other regula- 

 tions before the old ones appointed to meet the old needs have got into 

 working order. Bearing this in mind, we shall find that the course of 

 study prescribed in Huxley's time was wisely chosen to meet the needs 

 of, at least, the time immediately preceding that, if not, indeed, the 

 time itself. 



It will be observed that the study of physics, or as it was then more 

 commonly called natural philosophy, finds no place whatever in young 

 Fayrer's schedule, and that the one short course of chemistry, without 

 any practical instruction, which he attended was taken in his second 

 year — in the middle, as it were, of his curriculum, when he was already 

 advanced in his clinical studies. 



At the present time the sciences of physics and chemistry have each 

 of them developed into a body of logically coordinate truths, furnish- 

 ing an instrument of peculiar value for the training of the scientific 

 mind. Moreover the methods of teaching have developed in no less a 

 degree, so that in the laboratory the student follows, at a long distance 

 it is true, but still follows the steps of those 1 who have made the 

 science, and has at least the opportunity of catching something of the 

 spirit of scientific inquiry. In this educational value of these sciences, 

 even more than in the practical utility of a knowledge of the mere 

 facts of the sciences, great as that may be, lies the justification of the 

 authorities when these, desiring to improve the profession by intro- 

 ducing artificial selection into the struggle for existence, insist that all 

 to whom the lives and health of their fellow men are to be intrusted 

 should have learnt at least something of the sciences in question. 



In the time of Huxley's studentship both these sciences were in a 

 very different condition. The time, it is true, was one of great awaken- 

 ing. In physics men's minds were busy opening up the hidden powers 

 of electricity ; some ten years before Faraday had made an epoch by 

 discovering induced currents; he and others were still rapidly extend- 

 ing our knowledge, one practical outcome of which was the introduc- 

 tion of the telegraph in 1837. But how great has been the onward 



