764 The American Naturalist. [September, 
science, economy of organization, and improved methods of 
instruction. To secure these advantages the union must be a 
realone. There is nosaving grace in merely calling a medical 
school a department of a university. The medical school must 
be a vital, integral, co-ordinate part of the university. It 
should also be said in this connection that the granting of the 
doctor’s degree is the function of a university and it is a usur- 
pation for it to be assumed by independent medical schools 
responsible to nobody. 
Medical science and art rest upon a knowledge of anatomy 
and physiology and these latter subjects are included in the 
special medical studies. But before undertaking these special 
studies it is in every way desirable that the students should 
have had a liberal education which includesa fair training in 
physics, chemistry and general biology with the ability to read 
French and German. You not only have here all that is 
requisite for the training preliminary to medical education, 
but you have in these biological laboratories the foundation of 
a medical school and a part of the superstructure. The use- 
fulness of these laboratories, great as it is under existing condi- 
tions, would in my judgment be still further enhanced, espe- 
cially in certain departments, by association with a medical 
school, and I need not emphasize the enormous value which 
the medical school would derive from them. 
Not only this University but also the city of Chicago by its 
size and situation offers peculiarly favorable conditions for the 
foundation of a great medical school such as is here contem- 
plated. 
The present state of the science and art of medicine and of 
medical education renders especially urgent the claims of 
higher medical education. Medical science has made enor- 
‘mous strides during the last two decades. The present is & 
period of great and fruitful activity in medicine. New points 
of view have presented themselves. Problems of the highest 
importance to science and to humanity are awaiting only suit- 
able opportunity and patient investigation for their solution- 
Methods of the laboratory are now applied to the practical 
study of disease for purposes of diagnosis, prognosis and treat- 
