Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  ) 
November,  l'J13.  / 
How  to  Study  Medicine. 
515 
physicians  of  your  neighborhood  where  medicine  may  be  rightly 
studied,  but  do  not  make,  in  any  case,  your  decision  from  the  adver- 
tisements or  the  solicitations  of  the  medical  schools  themselves. 
Furthermore,  the  boy  of  this  generation  who  looks  toward  medi- 
cine must  understand  that  medicine  has  almost  been  made  over  in 
the  last  twenty  years.  To-day  the  practice  of  medicine  rests  upon 
the  application  of  certain  fundamental  sciences,  many  of  which  have 
had  their  development  in  these  last  two  decades.  For  example,  phy- 
siological chemistry,  the  chemistry  which  undertakes  to  deal  with 
the  processes  of  digestion  and  of  assimilation,  was  hardly  known  as 
a  practical  science  twenty  years  ago,  but  to-day  it  is  playing  a  most 
important  role  in  the  equipment  of  the  rightly  trained  physician. 
The  men  who  graduated-  twenty-five  years  ago  from  the  medical 
school  had  never  made  a  culture  of  bacteria.  To-day  no  man  can 
practice  medicine  without  day-by-day  examinations  of  the  by- 
products of  the  human  body.  In  a  word,  the  medical  and  surgical 
practice  of  our  day  is  nothing  other  than  the  application  of  those  fun- 
damental sciences — physiology,  anatomy,  bacteriology,  physiological 
chemistry,  and  the  like — which  deal  with  the  functions  and  the  con- 
struction of  the  human  mechanism.  Therefore,  any  man  who  is  to 
practice  medicine  in  the  future  must  have  a  grounding  in  these 
sciences,  and  a  thorough  one. 
All  this  has  brought  it  about  that  the  physician  of  this  generation 
must  be  not  only  grounded  in  the  technique-  of  these  fundamental 
sciences,  but  he  must  be  an  educated  man  as  well.  If  you  are  clerking 
in  a  store,  or  keeping  books  in  a  railway  office,  or  traveling  for  some 
commercial  house,  and  have  come,  through  one  means  or  another, 
to  consider  medicine  as  a  calling,  don't  imagine  for  a  moment  that 
you  can  be  a  successful  and  rightly  fitted  practitioner  of  medicine 
without  a  good  general  education,  and,  if  you  are  in  earnest  about 
your  profession,  you  will  go  to  work  to  get  this  general  education 
first  before  undertaking  the  other.  The  day  of  the  uneducated  doctor 
is  past,  except  as  he  is  able  to  impose  his  practice  upon  people  who 
do  not  know  what  they  are  entitled  to  have  in  the  way  of  medical 
treatment. 
Above  all,  do  not  let  yourselves  be  misled  or  deceived  by  the  plea 
put  forward  by  the  commercial  medical  schools,  that  they  are  to 
serve  the  poor  boy.  This  assumes  that  the  poor  boy  is  in  some  way 
or  other  to  be  got  into  the  practice  of  medicine  without  comply- 
ing with  the  requirements  for  that  profession  which  other  boys  are 
