188 
SCIENCE TEACHING IN ENGLAND. 
or lesser jumps to the fern and bean plant on the one side, 
and the frog on the other. I do not now express any opinion 
as to the relative advantages and disadvantages of this method 
of type-teaching, nor is it easy to come to any definite con¬ 
clusion thereon at all, although I systematically practise both 
methods of teaching. 
The second of the great changes is the enormous amplifi¬ 
cation in the scope of botanical teaching, due, there can be 
no doubt, to the publication of the “ Lehrbucli der Botanik ” 
of Professor Sachs, in 1872, and its translation into English 
m 1875. It is well-nigh impossible to estimate at its due 
value the influence of this grand work upon the formation of 
the modem school of English botanists. From it the teach¬ 
ing of Cambridge took its inspiration, and to Cambridge four- 
fifths of the teachers of the new school owe their training. 
The third change referred to is the gradual decadence, 
and final excision, of Botany, as a subject essential to the 
training of every medical man. This change, which has 
come into operation for the conjoint Colleges of Physicians 
and Surgeons of London, and the Universities of Cambridge 
and London,—the largest medical examining bodies in the 
-kingdom,—has been due largely to the desire to contract the 
scope of the student’s work, and partly to more strictly 
scientific reasons, since in the Universities of Cambridge and of 
London ‘‘Biology” has replaced it as an examination subject. 
With this alteration, jier se, I have here, of course, nothing to 
do, but I must in passing be allowed to touch upon one or 
two principles which I think ought clearly to underlie the 
training for any such profession as that of medicine. It must 
be borne in mind that the medical man has rights and powers 
conferred upon him by statute ; that the life, health, and, in 
some degree also, the reputation of his patient are entrusted to 
him, and that the patient cannot reasonably be expected to 
accurately gauge the extent of his professional adviser’s ability. 
He has, in fact, largely .to be taken on the faith of what 
examinations and the statute represent him to be. The 
public, then, has a right to demand that no misplaced 
leniency shall turn adrift upon it men who have not been 
tested in the most stringent manner. The work of the 
doctor cannot be tested like the work of the carpenter; the 
fact of being a medical man should carry with it its own 
evidence of skill. Further, the medical man differs from 
the quack only in that his methods are scientific and not 
empirical, and the public, therefore, has a right to ask that 
his education shall be based upon the soundest possible 
scientific training; and that, as his profession is not chemical 
