PRACTICAL PHYSIOLOGY. 
945 
obliged to arrange to give instruction to two classes who do 
duplicate work at different hours. Two hours and a half 
are allotted to the meeting of each class, which is held in a 
special physiological laboratory, doubtless to be hereafter 
known as the “ Sharpey Physiological Laboratory,” when the 
arrangements connected with the Sharpey Memorial shall 
have been fully carried out. This room has been fitted with 
a long table, adapted for the microscope of the class, and 
with supplementary tables fitted with gas and water-supply 
for the chemical operation, a (( stink closet,” &c., suitable for 
the work intended. 
The intention is that each student should prepare for him- 
self seriatim the several structures of the body, and submit 
them to microscopic examination, showing by his own sketches, 
made at the time, that he clearly apprehends the subject in 
hand. Then, that each student should test for himself the 
variousduids of the body, and investigate the chemical changes 
which take place in the processes of digestion, respiration, 
&c. In addition to this, at each meeting, the, professor him- 
self conducts before the class some three or four experiments 
requiring delicacy of manipulation and experience, and there- 
fore not capable of being entrusted to individual pupils. 
We may give as examples the experiments made at the last 
meetings of the class. 1. The method of subjecting living 
tissues or cells to the action of gases while they are examined 
under the microscope, and in particular the changes in the 
appearance of the coloured blood-corpuscles, when they are 
subjected alternately to the action of carbonic acid and of 
oxygen. 2. The method of subjecting living tissues or cells 
to the action of the induced electric currents (faradisation) 
when under the microscope, as illustrated by the effects of 
such currents in discharging the colouring matter of the red 
blood-corpuscles, and in suspending the amoeboid movements 
of the white ones. 3. The effect of chloroform on the blood- 
corpuscles. 4. The mode of examining under the micro- 
scope living tissues of mammalian animals at the tempera- 
ture of the body, &c. 
It is obvious that such a course of instruction, which will 
doubtless be more or less imitatpd at all our medical schools, 
will afford the student a knowledge of physiology very dif- 
ferent from that acquired by attendance on theoretical lec- 
tures and by reading only. We give all credit to the College 
of Surgeons for having required such a course as a part of 
the ordinary curriculum, and hope that this system of teach- 
ing will shortly render impossible such comments as those 
made by Professor Huxley upon “ the singular unreality of 
