I N TRODUCTOR Y LKCTU R IvS. 
727 
ably those to whom medical education is entrusted. How many 
general practitioners would scorn the hard-got incomes of the 
most eminent amongst our teachers. We could point to some 
who, with the highest reputation and undoubted ability, yet 
rank with the poorest in our profession in regard to wealth. But, 
since it will be easily admitted that teachers, too, must live, they 
are constrained to divide their mental strength between the la- 
bours of their proper functions and the practice of medicine. 
Hence originates a deficiency in the time and attention which 
they are enabled to bestow upon their especial business of in- 
struction, and a consequent loss to the student. 
“ The next cause, and one of great moment, takes its source 
in the very injudicious period selected for examination by the 
medical corporations. The student, at his first entrance on his 
studies, feeling that no test of industry will be required of him 
by these bodies until the close of his three years of study, post- 
pones the difficult task of acquiring a habit of study, until first 
one, and then a second season is lost. Again, if he contem- 
plates his examination at all, it is only to regard, with fear and 
trembling, a confused mass of acquirement, a heterogeneous 
compound of varied information, more than a single brain can 
hold, upon which his capability to practise is to be tested, and 
his merits decided. How infinitely more rational, how much 
more just and advantageous to the student would it be to divide 
the numerous subjects constituting the medical curriculum, and 
establish an examination at the end of every six or even of every 
three months. By such an arrangement, the student's labour 
would be required to commence with his first entrance upon his 
studies ; and many an unfortunate man, having his incapacity 
detected at the end of the first three or six months, might be 
saved the loss of time attendant upon the pursuit of a profession 
in which he could never succeed, and the ruin and disgrace 
attached to rejection at the close of his studies. ” 
A Discourse 'pronounced at the Termination of the Session of 
1834, at the Veterinary School at Toulouse , bi) Professor 
Bernard. 
There is so much eloquence, good feeling, and true philoso- 
phy in the address of Professor Bernard, at Toulouse, at the 
/termination of the Session of 1834, that we do not scruple to add 
it to the preceding orations. 
“ Following the example of the other schools of this city, to 
