648 
ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 
willing to do without us. If I am right in supposing that 
the pursuit of physiological research will always be closely 
connected with medical study, it becomes of interest to us to 
know in how far the existing institutions for teaching are 
fitted for the training of scientific men. We who are per¬ 
sonally concerned in the teaching of medicine must admit 
that, so far as concerns English schools, an ordinary medical 
education is a very poor preparation for a scientific career. 
The reason of this is that the “ medical sciences,’’ as they 
used to he called—viz. chemistry, anatomy, and physiology 
—have developed far too fast for the resources of the medical 
schools. Physiology, which twenty or thirty years ago might 
be called the handmaid of medicine, has become a science 
quite independent of the art which first brought her into ex¬ 
istence—learning little or nothing from it, based entirely oil 
experiment, and claiming much closer relationship with the 
other experimental sciences. Twenty years ago a lecture 
room and a gallery for showing preparations under the micro¬ 
scope was all that was thought necessary even in the largest 
and best appointed of our schools of medicine, but then how 
different was that time from the present ? Ludwig had lately 
written his earliest papers on arterial pressure, and had thus, 
by the introduction of new methods, inaugurated a new era 
in the physiology of the new mechanical functions. Du Bois 
Reymond had scarcely begun that series of researches by 
which he, like Ludwig, might be said rather to have founded 
a new science than to have extended the limits of an old one. 
In France, Brown-Sequard had made his great discovery of 
the functions of the vasomotor system, and Bernard his of the 
glycogenic functions of the liver. All of these being the re¬ 
sults of which the intrinsic value, great as it was, has been 
surpassed by the influence they have since exercised on the 
progress of that science. How rapid that progress has been 
may be judged of by any one who chooses to read any of the 
text books of twenty years ago in the light of recent researches. 
In this great progress we should rather not have to admit 
that Germany has done so much of the work; France, not¬ 
withstanding her great leaders, has done less than she ought 
to have done. In taking her part in it, England has been 
represented by us, her medical teachers, but we, confessing 
ourselves to be possessed neither of the men nor the means 
of prosecuting an experimental science, have been only too 
readily content to reap the fruits of other men’s labours. It 
would not be agreeable to make this admission, were it not 
possible to look forward with considerable confidence to some¬ 
thing better. In the great schools of London, in the old univer- 
