MUSEUMS AS EDUCATIONAL ADJUNCTS 
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VIII. Collecting specimens. 
IX. Preservation of specimens. 
X. Financial support. 
I.— Of what advantage is a well arranged and properly managed museum to 
a medical college ? 
1. It forms an attractive feature, favorably impresses visitors, and aids in the 
education of the public mind. 
That a museum is attractive, is shown by the fact that when accessible to 
students, they frequently resort to it for the purpose of examining specimens in 
order to solve some question which has arisen in their minds; or for the purpose 
of gaining a more general idea of natural objects, or perhaps for no other pur¬ 
pose than to “kill time ” while waiting for the next lecture. 
In this latter instance, some might argue that no good could result from a 
visit to a museum. But opposed to this view there are numerous cases (for a 
remarkable one, vide 12)* where a student or other individual has strolled into a 
museum with no other object in view, and being attracted by some “curious 
thing,” has paused a moment to inspect it more closely. Objects close at hand 
have stimulated further observation, and thus a series of examinations have been 
instituted, which, affording the individual a certain amount of pleasure, ulti¬ 
mately led him to a systematic study of natural objects and their vital phe¬ 
nomena. 
“ He has gained a new sense—a thirst for natural knowledge. * * * * 
If his intellectual capacity be limited and ordinary, he will be a better citizen and 
happier man; if in his brain there be dormant power, it may wake up to make 
him a Watt, a Stephenson, or a Miller.” f 
For further support of this view, the following is quoted from Prof. W. Boyd 
Dawkins, F. R. S.: 
“Visitors to the British Museum, however frivolous they may be, leave it all 
the better for having been there. It is impossible that they should not carry 
away some sort of an idea, which otherwise would not have occurred to them, 
even if it be but the recognition that outside their daily lives there is a world of 
knowledge, vast and indefinite, but real and tangible.” (12,98.) 
The Bishop of Manchester is credited with having said : “ It is impossible to 
disguise from ourselves the paramount importance that public opinion should be 
rightly informed, rightly instructed and rightly directed.” (10). Prof. Dawkins 
in a recent letter to Nature, writes: “Few of the many subjects now pressing 
themselves on the public attention are more important than that of museums, of 
the work which they are doing now in general education, and that they may 
reasonably be expected to do in the future.” (9, 78). 
“The value of museums cannot be over-estimated, for every lover of natural 
history cannot be a collector; but every one in the full possession of his faculties 
can observe, so far as he has the power of seeing, and if he cannot examine the 
* The numbers refer to a list of works and papers at the close of this article, 
t Note.—M ost, if not all the quotations in this article, touching upon museums, have 
reference more especially to general natural history museums than to medical museums. But I 
have taken the liberty to quote them, because that which is true of the former will also be 
true, in the main, of the latter. 
