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THE VETERINARIAN, JUNE 1, 1870. 
Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat. — Cicero. 
EDUCATIONAL REFORM. 
It is in some sense consolatory to find it not only in our 
own profession tliat reforms are considered to be necessary. 
At a recent distribution of prizes at the University College 
Professor Huxley said — 
“ Speaking of medical education, he had for twelve or 
thirteen years been an examiner in the University of London. 
xAlthough the men who came up there were the pick of the 
London schools, he had found them all labouring under cer- 
tain disadvantages, owing to the defective system of education 
now pursued. What had struck him during his long experi- 
ence of the best instructed of the medical schools, was the sin- 
gular unreality of their knowledge of physiology. He did not 
complain of the quantity, for there was, if anything, too 
much of it, but he did quarrel with the quality. He had in- 
variably found that the men who came up for examination 
did not know their physiology as they did their anatomy. 
While anatomy was properly taught as a science, physiology 
was taught as if it were a mere matter of books and hearsay. 
This was not a desirable state of things, and his earnest con- 
viction on the point had led him to the somewhat bold course 
of publicly stating his opinions. Anatomy, which lay in the 
direction of practice, might be thoroughly taught, but this 
was not so with physiology. From the very nature of the 
case the occupant of the physiological chair remained there 
until he had achieved professional success, and then he left 
it ; he was clothed, but physiology was bare. The remedy 
he suggested was the centralisation of the teaching of the 
theoretical branches of the profession in not more than three 
central institutions, where able professors could be main- 
tained. He would cut down these theoretical branches to a 
considerable extent, and would have the elements of physical 
science taught in the primary schools — physics, chemistry, 
botany, and the like. Comparative anatomy ought to be 
absolutely abolished, although it would involve the putting 
back of such branches as zoology and botany to the students' 
early education in ordinary schools. He would also abolish 
materia medica. He could not understand why gentlemen 
