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The same industry which will form his best and safest resort in the first moments of depression will, I sincerely hope, be his chosen and constant companion through the whole of his career. Without industry, without steady and persevering industry, he can do nothing. The work he has taken in hand is not merely the acquisition of a certain amount of theoretical knowledge; it is not merely a passing contest for distinction; it is not merely a hurried and superficial preparation for the hall, the college, or the university; but it is the preparation for the duties of a life-for the daily work of a difficult, important, and responsible profession. The knowledge to be acquired is not for the purposes of show or the gratification of taste, but for practical application to the prevention and cure of disease, and the alleviation of human suffering.

For this great and good work you are about to prepare by industriously availing yourselves of the opportunities which the liberality and public spirit of the council of this college have provided. They have supplied you with every facility for obtaining theoretical and practical knowledge; you, on your part, have only to turn these facilities and oppor

tunities to account.

It will be my agreeable duty to tell you what these facilities and opportunities are; and, at the same time, to offer some suggestions as to the course of study which you should adopt, the order in which you will have to attend your several lectures, and the claims which they will respectively make upon your attention. I may thus hope to be instrumental in removing some of that perplexity which cannot fail to attend the novel position in which you are placed, and to set you on a vantage ground whence you may survey the wide field opened to the exercise of your industry.

In speaking of the facilities and opportunities provided for the medical student in this college it is very far from my intention to exalt this school at the expense of any other place of medical education. It is not my object to institute comparisons, but simply to put you in possession of information which may be useful to you as strangers in this place.

One of the leading objects of the professors in recommending to the council the appointment of a Dean of the Medical Department was to provide, at all times, but especially on the approach of the winter session, a source of information open to all who might be in doubt or difficulty as to the course which they ought to pursue; and I take this opportunity of stating that during my year of office it will give me personally, as it has done my predecessors, great pleasure to be the means of conveying such information.

The professors had the same object in view in the publication of a hand-book, which is this year superseded by the College Calendar. The student may consult this little volume with advantage, for much useful information relative to the courses of lectures delivered in the college, as well as for the regulations and requirements of the several examining bodies; and I hope that many of our new comers will have the satisfaction of seeing their names mentioned with honour in future editions as prizemen, scholars, and associates. Another and more important provision has been made for removing the perplexities and smoothing the early difficulties of the junior students in the appointment of a tutor. It will be his duty, and I am sure I may add, his pleasure, to assist them in their studies, to remove their early difficulties, to advise them as to their course of reading, to test the progress they are making, and to give them all the advantage of his own comparatively recent experience as one of the most industrious, intelligent, and successful pupils whom it has been our privilege to educate. In mentioning the name of Dr. George Johnson, I must remind you of the additional claim which he has upon your respect as an original and most successful cultivator of that new field of observation opened out by the microscope; a claim, however, which he shares with others, to whom, in the early part of your career more especially, you will be under great obligations-I mean the demonstrators of anatomy, Messrs. Simon and Bowman.

I must not quit this subject of the tutor without

alluding to the testimony recently borne to the importance of his office by the endowment of a tutorship in one of our provincial schools by a warm friend and liberal benefactor of this college, Dr. Warneford; nor can I deny myself the pleasure of adverting to the gratifying fact, that in this, as in the establishment of the collegiate system, King's College has taken the lead among the medical schools of England.

The library and museum, to which the student will have constant access, and where he will find ample provision for the prosecution of his studies in the intervals of his lectures, may be mentioned among the facilities which have been provided for him.

The lectures themselves will, of course, form the principal means of instruction; and they are constantly assuming additional importance by being more and more largely illustrated by experiments, preparations, models, diagrams, and tables.

The increasing use of these tangible and visible objects is fast converting the unillustrated discourses of former times into demonstrations submitted to the most accurate and faithful of our senses a change productive of the best effects, and tending to foster that practical spirit which is the glory of this country and the best feature of these times.

But the facilities and opportunities of which I speak with greatest satisfaction are those arrange ments for practical teaching which have been lately introduced into our leading schools and hospitals.

The first form which these arrangements took was that of the dissecting-room--the oldest practical school provided for the medical student-a school which has always been regarded, and justly, as of the very first importance, and which it has been the constant care of our able professor of anatomy to maintain in a state of efficiency.

With this view our anatomical staff will, this year, be increased by the appointment of two assistant demonstrators, Messrs. Nunn and Brinton.

It is not a little remarkable that our dissectingrooms should have been so long holding out an example of practical teaching, and of the immense benefits derived from it, and yet no attempts at imitation should have been made till a very recent period by a science to the full as much in need of practical facilities and appliances as anatomy-I mean chemistry.

At length, however, the necessity is fully felt, and the practical laboratory is becoming as essential a part of a school of medicine as the dissecting-room itself.

In this college it is now of some few years' standing, and the zeal of Dr. Miller has recently added another practical school, where the advanced student of the medical as of other professions may prosecute a continued series of chemical inquiries under the immiate direction of the demonstrator and professor of chemistry, and stimulated to exertion by the prize recently founded in honour of our late distinguished and lamented colleague, Professor Daniell.

which the course of medical instruction is assuming in all the leading schools of medicine, as a subject of congratulation, and a change in harmony with the spirit of our times; and I would urge you to avail yourselves, throughout the whole of your career, of all the practical facilities and oppor tunities which fall in your way. To a regular at tendance on lectures, and a diligent perusal of such authors as may be recommended by the several professors, you should add the practical labours of the dissecting-room, the laboratory, and the wards of the hospital. Lectures and books are but preparations for these personal exercises and experiences, as these again are for the actual practice of your profession.

Before I present you with the promised sketch of the course of study which you will be required to follow, I must remind you of the necessity under which the pupil lies of possessing a competent knowledge of the Latin language. If he should be conscious of any deficiency in this respect, he should lose no time in repairing it, by giving ax part of each day to the study of the authors selected by the examining bodies. I would insist upon this daily study of the Latin tongue as greatly to be preferred to an exclusive attention to it, with a view to an approaching examination. By postponing the necessary preparation in this, as in other branches of study, the pupil is led to depart from that regular and steady devotion to the proper labours of the time being, which is, on every ground, so much to be deprecated..

In insisting upon a competent knowledge of the Latin language, I am very far from urging the medical pupil to sacrifice even the least important of his medical studies to the acquirement of a critical knowledge of this or of any other language; and I cannot but regret that the obsolete usages of some of our examining bodies should tend, as they do, to attach undue importance to Latin composi❤ tion and conversation. To the clergyman a critical and profound knowledge of the ancient languages, especially of the Greek and Hebrew, is of the first importance, as the business of interpretation forms an essential part of his sacred functions; but regulations which tempt and encourage the medical man to devote his time to the speaking of Latin, and the composition of Latin theses and orations, must be looked upon with grave suspicion, as ba substitution of the letter of antiquated customs for the spirit which gave them birth.

The only safe test of custom is utility-not utility>> in the abstract, but utility at the time and in the place at which and in which such custom prevails. The use of Latin in conversation and composition will not bear this test. It is, at the least, a wasteof time. Not so, however, with the modern lan guages, especially French and German. If ther student feels that he has any time to devote to the learning of languages, over and above that which is necessary to enable him to read Latin authors with facility, he will have no reason to regret having spent that time in the acquisition of French or German. He will find those languages useful to Equal care has been taken to render the hospital him in more ways than one; and they will proa place of practical teaching, by the frequent deli-bably be found to yield a return in kind for anyt very of clinical lectures, by daily observations at expense which they may have entailed. This conthe bedside, and by increasing as much as possible sideration is not to be overlooked or despised in the offices, by filling which the student may ob- any comparison which we may institute between tain a practical familiarity with the treatment of the dead and the living languages. disease and the manipulations of surgery. These offices are conferred, after due examination, and without entailing on the student additional expense.

I have thus briefly glanced at some of the facilities which have been placed within the reach of the student; and I now proceed with equal brevity to present him with a scheme of the course of study which he will have to follow, and to offer some suggestions for his guidance during the career upon which he is about to enter. And here I must again apologize to such of my audience as have passed the period of their pupilage, or who, for other reasons, are little interested in the details of medical education. The importance which attaches to the first steps of a new career must plead my excuse, if I seem to spend too much time in an attempt to guide them aright.

I have already alluded to the practical character

There is another acquirement of a very different kind to which, if the student is conscious of any. deficiency, he ought to devote some attention: I mean arithmetic. When he comes to attend lectures on chemistry, he will find that, without somewhat more extensive knowledge of figures than is generally brought from our public schools, he will often be at a loss. He will be bewildered by equivalents and decimals and proportions, and grow disheartened as he becomes confused. little attention and application will enable him to supply his deficiency in this respect. He will find, moreover, that the use of figures is not confined to the laboratory, but that it is becoming every day more and more imperative in every branch of knowledge which makes any pretensions to accuracy, and in none more than in that department of medical science which aims at the prevention of disease and the preservation of health.

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The efforts which the student may find it necessary to make to supply the deficiencies of his early education should, however, on no account be allowed to interfere with the regular course of his strictly medical studies. claim upon his attention, and it is not till that claim These have the first is satisfied that he can safely turn to other pursuits. It must, indeed, be confessed that the programme of the studies which the medical pupil is bound by the authorities to pursue is such as, at first sight, to inspire some degree of apprehension. It is the largest and most comprehensive scheme of education in existence; and it has this peculiarity, that the examination (I speak now chiefly of the Hall and College) which is to test the student's competency to practise his profession takes place at one and the same time in all the subjects which have engaged his attention. It is obvious that so large an amount of knowledge is not to be acquired and retained without industry, method, and economy of time; and it is equally obvious that, even if a certain routine were not distinctly prescribed by the examining bodies, it would be absolutely necessary to attend these several courses of lectures in some regular order.

What that order is it will scarcely be necessary that I should point out. It follows naturally from the relation which one subject bears to another. No one can safely undertake a surgical operation without a previous acquaintance with the structure and arrangement of the parts upon which he is about to operate. Hence the study of anatomy must precede that of surgery. So also, before we can safely prescribe a remedy, we must understand both the minute structure and functions of the part affected by disease, and the properties of the substance we propose to employ. The study of the practice of medicine, therefore, must be preceded by that of physiology on the one hand, and of chemistry and botany on the other. Our medical curricula have been formed on this obvious principle. Accordingly, during the first winter session, the student is directed to attend a course of lectures on anatomy, a second on physiology, and a third on chemistry To these, if he proposes to limit his education to the period of three winter and two summer sessions-the minimum prescribed by one of our examining bodies-he must add a course of lectures on materia medica and therapeutics.

dissecting-room ought to terminate, and, if due
on anatomy and physiology and the labours of the |
diligence has been shown, there is no doubt that a
competent knowledge of both these subjects will
Surgeons has, however, thought otherwise, and
have been obtained. The council of the College of
prescribed a third course of anatomy and physi-
ology. But for this regulation, the third winter
session might be devoted exclusively to the lectures
on the three practical sciences of medicine, surgery,
and midwifery, and the practical pursuits of the
hospital; and the third summer session to a course
of forensic medicine. The fourth winter session
may be spent in attending a second course of medi-
cine and surgery; and this, as well as the remaining
bedside which is to form the immediate prepara-
summer session, in that diligent attendance at the
tion for the responsible duties of the profession.
of the course of study which you will be required,
My object in laying before you this brief outline
mind you of the vast extent of your studies, than
or may be recommended, to follow, is rather to re-
to furnish you with information which may be
readily obtained from other sources.
thus early the amount of labour which you will be
the very first importance that you should understand
I deem it of
called upon to perform; that you should feel at
the very outset that you have no time to lose;
that you should resolve to give yourselves forth-
perseverance, to the work you have taken in hand.
with earnestly and steadily, with punctuality and
As I have already stated, it has been the constant
aim of the professors and authorities of this college
prosecution of your studies, and for the practice of
to provide you with every possible facility for the
those manipulations which will be so constantly in
request when you come to enter on the business of
your profession.

in physiology, surgery, medicine, and midwifery, to
tion by additional prizes and certificates of honour
manipulation, and for the medical and surgical
studies of the hospital. I have already mentioned,
which I may add, prizes for proficiency in chemical
founded to give encouragement to the higher order
of attainments in practical chemistry.
as of recent establishment, the Daniell Scholarship,

has a salutary effect in stimulating and sustaining
the industry of the student, and though its in-
But though the system of prizes and endowments
fluence is felt by a large number of our pupils, it
engine by which to move the sluggish and fix the
would not be safe or desirable to trust to a system
of reward and competition as the chief or only
wavering. Such a system, from its very nature,
must be partial in its operation. The majority of
the slow of apprehension, and the infirm of pur-
action of these moral stimulants. The diffident,
all bodies of young men is inaccessible to the
require to be guided and assisted in the laborious
pose, either keep altogether aloof from competition,
or abandon it long before the day of trial. They
and reward-a prospect which must be regarded,
prising are attracted by the prospect of distinction
career into which the more ambitious and enter-
ought not to be allowed to usurp the place of a
in any case, as a secondary inducement, and which
sense of duty and obligation.

sideration of the responsible nature of the profession medical student, whatever his character or capacity, It is this sense of duty, strengthened by a conwhich he has embraced, that can alone preserve the which, if he yield to them, will soon be followed by from the temptations to idleness and negligence assaults still more difficult to resist, and still more fatal to his present welfare and future prospects.

been anxious to add encouragements, in the shape I believe the fears often entertained by parents and To facilities and opportunities the council have peculiar alarm the student's residence in London. I am not of the number of those who view with of prizes, certificates of honour, and scholarships: guardians to be exaggerated and founded in misthe prizes as rewards of merit in individual sub-apprehension. I think that it would appear, on jects, and the scholarships as acknowledgments of close investigation, that in the large majority of the subjects treated in the lectures of the year in temptations of the great metropolis are really immore general and comprehensive attainments in which they are awarded. cases, the vices and disorders attributed to the altogether from a control which he had long disportations from the country town. student is merely the riotous apprentice released The disorderly he had had too many opportunities of eluding. The regarded and set at nought, or a vigilance which incomplete occupation of his time, and the irregular exposed him to temptations far greater than those surveillance to which he was necessarily subject, which await him amid the engrossing occupations the collegiate system. There is this additional adhere, with the regular and punctual observances of of the school and hospital, combined, as they are holds out at least as many harmless attractious as vantage, too, attending a residence in London, that it abounds in the means of innocent relaxation, and town, on the other hand, while the temptations are it does dangerous temptations. In the country scarcely less numerous, the means of innocent relaxation are reduced to a very small amount.

thus reserved for those who have pursued with most The highest and most valuable distinctions are amining bodies and recommended by the prosuccess the course of study prescribed by the exfessors; and the strongest encouragement is held whole circle of those sciences, a knowledge of out to the student to make himself master of the which is justly regarded as essential to the chaAssum-racter of the accomplished physician and surgeon.

But I would strongly urge upon the pupil the importance of extending his term of education to four years at the least. The advantage to be obtained is well worth the sacrifice of time, and he may rest assured that he will have no cause to regret the additional year devoted to his studies. ing that he has already determined upon this wise course, he will have, during his first winter session, to attend lectures on anatomy, physiology, and chemistry; and as soon as he has made himself acquainted with the rudiments of osteology he will be prepared for the practical studies of the dissecting-room.

Such is the programme of his studies for the first winter session. During the first summer session he should attend a course of lectures on botany, and a course of practical manipulation in the chemical laboratory.

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By following this course he will find himself, at the end of his first year, in possession of a large amount of elementary knowledge. He will have made some progress in all the sciences which constitute the foundation of medical and surgical practice. This foundation he will proceed, in his second winter session, to widen and strengthen by attending a second course of anatomy and physiology, and by a diligent attendance in the dissecting-room. Chemistry and botany, which were studied in the previous winter and summer sessions, will now find their joint application in the course of materia medica and therapeutics, and the student may enter with advantage on his attendance in the wards of the hospital.

so recently founded by the liberality of the council,
I must not quit this subject of the scholarships,
without adverting to the advantage which they are
likely to confer on the profession by adding to the
often scanty resources of the industrious student,
and thus enabling him to obtain for himself a more
complete and extended medical education. When
we reflect how often, in all professions, the con-
sciousness of limited resources, and the anxious
education imposes on a parent, have given rise to
desire to lighten the burden which a professional
the most strenuous and successful efforts, we may
more numerous endowments of our ancient uni-
venture to hope that these scholarships, like the
versities, may be the means of fostering that open-
ing talent which is destined to shed a lustre on our
profession.

professors that the first proposal to found a scho-
It is a source of great satisfaction to the medical
larship in connection with this college emanated
from themselves; and that they have thus led the
which has been lately extended to all the depart-
way to that more general system of endowment
ments of the college.

honour, and scholarships upon a large and liberal By the establishment of prizes, certificates of In the second summer session he may attend a scale, the authorities of the college have furnished course of lectures on comparative anatomy, and, if address itself with effect to a large number of our a motive to industry which may be expected to he have not already practised pharmacy as an ap- pupils. On referring to the calendar recently pubprentice, he should avail himself of the opportuni-lished, I find that no less than twenty-eight of ties of practical instruction offered in the dispensary of the hospital.

With the second winter session the attendance

these distinctions
this number will be increased at the next distribu-
were conferred on nineteen
students, at the end of the last winter session; and

In instituting this comparison between the danopposed to the prevalent belief. The issue of the gers and temptations incident to a residence in being influenced by a desire to put forward opinions comparison, far from being a matter of idle curiosity, town and country respectively, I am very far from has an important bearing on a leading question medical student himself, and of the profession to question whether it is most to the advantage of the connected with medical education: I mean the with an apprenticeship, and be followed by the which he belongs, that his education should begin usual course of medical study in some metropolitan the pupil commence his medical studies at the color provincial school of medicine, or whether the into disuse, should be altogether abandoned, and system of apprenticeship, which is gradually falling lege or hospital.

alternative, I would by no means represent the system of apprenticeship as oue of unmixed evil, or the opposite system as one of unqualified superiority. In expressing an opinion in favour of this last under a deep sense of the responsibility which ating a tribute of respect to those medical men who, Nor would I willingly lose this opportunity of pay

taches to them, make the interest of the apprentice their constant care, and afford him every facility and assistance in the prosecution of his studies. Still less would I overlook the great advantages afforded to the hospital apprentice in the union of a wide and constantly-accessible field of experience, with the instruction and superintendence of one who having recently completed his own studies, and passed his own examinations, is still possessed of all that minute and detailed information which is so essential to successful teaching. The situation of the apprentice in London, or in the large provincial towns possessed of medical schools, is also highly favourable, as it combines with the comforts of a home and large opportunities of experience, great facilities for acquiring elementary knowledge. But it is not by exceptional cases, however numerous, that the merits of a great question are to be determined. We must take a broad and comprehensive view of the rival systems, balancing carefully their respective advantages and disadvantages, and taking care that prejudice has no part in the decision.

A comparison instituted in this spirit would, 1 believe, issue in favour of a medical education commencing at the college and hospital. Among the advantages of this system I would specify the habit of regular application to study, and of submission to discipline, carried from the school to the college, taking the place of the five years' appreu- | ticeship, with its scanty occupation, its irregular instruction, and its necessarily imperfect surveillance; a residence in the metropolis, with its works of art, its exhibitions of machinery, its scientific institutions, its many innocent amusements, contrasted with a residence in a country town, so deficient in the means of innocent relaxation; and lastly, the association with a large number of young men engaged in the same studies, animated by a wholesome esprit de corps, and possessed of equal or superior talents, contrasted with the comparative isolation so often productive of a fatal self-conceit. Such are some of the advantages attendant on the system of consecutive school and college education.

I am aware that the advocates of the system of apprenticeship will support it on the ground that it affords to the pupil facilities not otherwise attainable, that it introduces him at once to the practical operations of pharmacy and the minor operations of surgery, and after a time to the treatment of disease. This argument is deprived of much of its force when we consider the little time required to master the practical details of pharmacy, compared with that which is unprofitably spent behind the counter; the small number of the minor operations of surgery which is practised, and the unnatural process which makes the treatment of disease to precede the instruction by which alone medicine can be made a rational art, and the practice of it a reasonable proceeding. Common sense and daily experience point to the instruction in principles followed by their practical application as the best and safest sequence, and medicine ought most certainly to form no exception to the general rule. The practical character which, as I have already had occasion to notice, medical education is everywhere assuming, renders the system of apprenticeship less necessary than it was; and, if it should be found that the facilities afforded by the hospital are not sufficient to prepare the student for the responsibilities of private practice, a modified system of apprenticeship, resembling the condition of the unpaid assistant, might be most advantageously made to follow the obtaining of a diploma.

I throw out these few suggestions not as exhausting a very interesting and important subject, but with a view of inviting attention to a leading question connected with medical education-a question which is not without interest in this college, where it is not unusual for the pupil, after having received his school education in the lower department, and completed his preliminary training in the department of literature and science, to enter at once upon his medical studies, without the intervention of an apprenticeship. Believing this course of proceeding to be, on the whole, advantageous, I cannot but regard it as worthy of all encouragement, and

I think that the considerations which I have thrown out in reference to the comparative security of a residence in the metropolis may be looked upon as supplying an additional argument in its favour. But this course of education presupposes, as an essential condition of its success, a system of discipline combining college residence, daily religious observances, a regular attendance in the collegehall, an early closing of the college-gates, a wellorganized plan of surveillance, and authority to check and punish all offences against good manners and the rules of morality—a system, in fact, modelled upon, but not following too closely, that established in our old English universities, and which, whatever its defects, has the sanction of experience and the stamp of success.

It is a system which assumes the responsibility of the parent, and asks for ready acquiescence at the hands of the student, on the ground that it aims solely at his advantage, by the sacrifice of the time and convenience of those by whom it is administered. Nothing but an anxious and conscientious desire for the welfare of the student could induce the authorities of the college to impose or to undertake the ungrateful task of reproof and correction. Fortunately the experience of this place shows how very rarely this painful exercise of authority is necessary, and how very generally the true meaning and spirit of the collegiate system is apprehended and appreciated. When properly understood it is nothing more nor less than the delegation of the undoubted authority of the parent over the minor, and, in the case of those who have passed the age at which parental authority is understood to cease, the voluntary submission to rules and regulations which every young man of common sense would impose upon himself; but which every one who has learnt by experience his own occasional want of self-control would wish to see administered by any hand rather than his own.

The collegiate system, then, which, as applied to medical education, was first put in practice within these walls, would seem to be peculiarly adapted to the gradual disuse of the system of apprenticeship, and the altered character of medical education consequent upon it.

The success of this great experiment has been complete, though it has hitherto been carried out on a more limited scale than could have been desired; and its effect on the character and conduct of the medical pupil has been precisely such as the experience of our ancient universities would have led us to expect.

It is a matter of common observation that a residence at our English universities, even when it is not the means of adding materially to the literary or scientific attainments of the student, has an effect, difficult to describe but easy to recognise, on his manners and deportment. It makes him emphatically a gentleman. And this it does, not by virtue of the studies in which he engages, but by the extended intercourse with young men of his own age, his equals and superiors; by the formation of an esprit de corps, by the influence of a sound public opinion; and, above all, by that self-respect which a voluntary submission to a moral and religious discipline insensibly creates. Under the wholesome influence of this system of collegiate discipline, the character of the medical student is undergoing a most salutary change. The prejudice which had been created against him is fast wearing away, and he is earning for himself a character more in harmony with that of the profession to which he belongs.

When we reflect on the social importance of our profession, the influence which it must ever exercise on individuals and on the public, the access which its members enjoy to every rank of society, from the highest to the lowest, and the delicate nature of the duties which it has to perform, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to exaggerate the importance of a system of education which, while it provides in the most liberal manner for the intellectual training of the medical student, and holds out to him every possible inducement to exexertion, surrounds him with wholesome restraints and decent observances, and constantly reminds him of his highest duties and most abiding inte

rests.

To the rising generation of medical students, brought under this wholesome influence, surrounded by facilities and encouragements, and subjected to mild and reasonable restraints, the profession looks with confidence and hope. The character of the medical student has become (I will not say with what degree of justice) a byword for vulgar riot and dissipation. Be it your task to rescue it from this foul reproach. The profession has been, and still is, too full of rivalry and contention. Be it yours to cultivate a spirit of peace and concord. Medical men have been long labouring to bring about a reform which shall conciliate rival interests, annihilate unnecessary distinctions, and substitute order and unity for the present perplexing maze of authorities and regulations: in a word, they have sought to infuse a catholic spirit into a profession which, rightly considered, has something of the sacredness of a religion; but in vain. It is clear that the time for so desirable a consummation has not yet arrived. Be it yours to hasten it by a conduct and demeanour governed by the spirit of the much-wished for change. Society, especially that part of it which exercises the widest influence over public opinion, shows a disposition to view with distrust and alarm the growing devotion to scientific pursuits, as tending to foster a spirit of doubt, if not of unbelief; and it has singled out the medical profession as more peculiarly an object of suspicion. Let it be your part, as men of science no less than as medical men, to remove this suspicion, if wellfounded, and to give it no support if based on a misconception of the natural tendencies of science, and a misapprehension of the actual facts of the

case.

For my own part, I believe that the mistrust of science in general, and the accusation so confidently urged against medical studies in particular, are altogether founded in error. They are among the leading fallacies and prejudices of our times, remnants of the spirit which of old incited bigotry to the persecution of philosophy, symptoms of a jealousy not unnaturally felt by men immersed in studies which tend to substitute a poetic admiration of the past for a practical devotion to the business of the present and the future.

Between these two classes there has always been an antagonism felt, if not expressed. The scholar, with a firm belief in the value of that word-knowledge, which has engrossed all the energies of his youth and early manhood, struck with a profound admiration of the nations which have carried purity of language to its highest pitch of perfection, and deeply interested in a history which abounds in traits of wisdom, patriotism, heroism, and genius, lives naturally in the past, and looks with comparative indifference on the present and the future. The man of science, on the other hand, without altogether denying the value of the word-knowledge, and acknowledging the claims of the past to our admiration and respect, asserts the still higher claims of the present and the future, finds in the pursuits of science his chief pleasure, and in its practical applications to the business of life, a sacred duty and a high privilege.

The largest and most influential body of educated men in England, the clergy, are, for obvious reasons, the great support of scholarship. A knowledge of the ancient languages is, as I have already intimated, essential to the right performance of their sacred duties, and, by a very natural generalization, they, as the educators of the upper and middle classes, have extended the system of classical education to all who come within the scope of their teaching. Thus it is that classical knowledge has come to be regarded, by the great mass of the nation, as an essential part of the education of a gentleman, as having a mysterious power of elevating and refining the tastes, and, what is more important in reference to the present question, as being conducive to the interests of religion.

The dead languages, and those branches of knowledge which were most successfully cultivated by the philosophers of Greece and Rome, being thus made the first object of attention in boyhood, and occupying a prominent place in the more advanced education of early manhood, and in the preparation for the sacred duties of the priesthood, it is but natural that, with this attachment to literature,

should spring up an aversion to the pursuits of science, a distrust of its tendencies, and a readiness to adopt any opinion to its prejudice which might appear to have a fair foundation in fact; and more especially if it were alleged, as it has been, that scientific pursuits tend to foster a spirit of scepticism and unbelief.

This appears to me to be neither an uncharitable nor an unreasonable explanation of the ready credence which has been given to the accusations brought against science in general, and the scientific studies of the physician in particular-accusations which, as I sincerely believe, derive as slender a support from fact as from the nature of things.

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How strongly ought this, the second use of science, to recommend it to those who, throwing off idle and uufounded prejudice, shall acknowledge that it does really furnish a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator!-the relief of man's estate! In this, too, science goes hand in hand with religion, investigating man's actual condidion, displaying the physical causes of his destitution and degradation, bringing into the open light of day the evils under which he labours, denouncing the barbarous negligence and ignorant wastefulness which condemn him to poverty in the midst of riches, to want while surrounded with the elements of abundance, to disease and premature decay while amply supplied by nature with all the appliances that minister to the preservation of health and the

cially) has been most unjustly suspected and aspersed, and are aware of the hold which this prejudice against it has taken on the public mind, will not be surprised that I should have seized this opportunity of vindicating its character and upholding its claims.

If at any time such considerations may be permitted and encouraged, it will not be thought that they are now out of place: for never before in the history of the world did science make such rapid strides; never before did its practical applications assume such vast importance; never did its true tendencies and bearings become a question of such engrossing interest.

Nor is this place inappropriate to the discussion of such topics. Its situation in the metropolis of a great empire points it out as in the highest degree favourable to the pursuits of science; as destined to take a leading part in scientific education; as a centre from which shall go forth to every part of England and the world, no insignificant proportion of those who, in their several spheres, shall be engaged in applying the great principles of science to the "relief of man's estate."

But, not content with displaying his actual condition, Science devises the means for its improvement. She gives scope to labour, and economises time by the invention of tools and machinery; creates abundance by developing all the resources of the land; brings cheap and wholesome amusement into successful competition with low and debasing vice, and, acting always in the spirit of the If Science be indeed, as I have feebly endeadivine command, bends all her efforts to the pre-voured to represent her, a worthy handmaid of relivention of that poverty which almsgiving-an obe-gion-if she be indeed engaged, as Lord Bacon dience to the letter-if it do not create, does long since proclaimed, in erecting and furnishing nothing more than palliate. a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator-where will she find a more appropriate dwelling-place than here, where religious instruction and moral discipline have been set forth as inseparable from all education?

In asserting my belief that these accusations have no real foundation in fact, I would not be under-prolongation of life. stood to deny that sceptics and atheists have been found in the ranks of men of science, and among the professors of the healing art. I would merely affirm that the same melancholy fact is true, to at least the same extent, of the pursuits of literature; and, though I am not fully prepared to balance the one against the other, I have little hesitation in expressing an opinion that the pursuits of science would be found in this respect the more harmless of the two. At any rate I am prepared to go to the length of denying the truth and justice of the accusation brought against the study of science and of medicine, as far as it pretends to be founded in fact. I have still less hesitation in expressing an opinion that the accusation to which I have referred derives no support whatever from the nature of things. It is no injustice to literary pursuits to state that they have no direct and obvious tendency to encourage modes of thinking favourable to religion; but it is acknowledged on all hands that scientific inquiries are peculiarly suggestive of such trains of thought. Natural history and sciences of observation in general deal directly with the works of creation, are constantly busied in tracing design, and as constantly pointing to an Almighty Designer; and I would appeal even to those who have unconsciously imbibed the prejudice (for I must be allowed so to term it) to which I have referred, whether anywhere out of the inspired volume are to be found such eloquence and heartfelt acknowledgments of the being, power, and goodness of the Deity, as have flowed spontaneously from the pen of the anatomist, the naturalist, the geologist, the astronomer?

The same tribute, too, is due to those who have cultivated sciences of experiment, as distinguished from those of mere observation, and who have found in the phenomena of dead matter, and the powerful agencies by which all its surprising changes are brought about, the same evidence of design, the same impress of an Almighty hand.

These sources of religious emotion are as unfailing as they are pure. Even admitting, as I most willingly do, that some studies of a literary nature -historical studies more particularly-are calculated to give rise to similar trains of thought, still for the living student of history its leading facts admit of no increase of number; but the sciences of observation and experiment open a field of inquiry to which it is impossible to set a limit. With every new region we explore, with every new and improved instrument we invent, new wonders dawn upon us. The telescope resolves the film of light into worlds and systems of worlds; the microscope peoples with swarms of living and moving creatures the drop of water or the grain of sand; while reason, aided by observation and experiment, knits together scattered and apparently unconnected phenomena, and, by establishing wider generalizations and more comprehensive laws, not merely opens out a larger prospect of the works of creation, but sheds upon them a clearer and a brighter light.

Nor are scientific pursuits to be commended solely as sources of religious emotion, and, therefore, as useful auxiliaries to religion. This is but one of two uses which revealed themselves to the high priest and prophet of natural and experimental science, who foresaw and foretold that, while it would be the means of erecting a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, it would minister to the relief of man's estate.

Of all the means which have been suggested for the prevention of poverty, the most certainly effectual would be a comprehensive system of sanatory regulations. This system is enforced by every consideration of justice, mercy, and true economy, and, I am happy to say, has found some of its most earnest and active advocates among the members of our own profession.

There is one other use of scientific studies which I cannot omit to mention, though at the risk of detaining you somewhat longer than I could have wished I mean their use as a mental training, to which it is the more necessary to allude, as in most schemes of education it is strangely overlooked. If education be a preparation for the business of life, then it ought to make provision for the exercise of all those faculties and powers which are called into use in the pursuits and occupations of manhood.

It is melancholy to reflect how large a proportion of those who are destined to hold influential and responsible positions in society are constantly entering upon the duties of life without any previous training of the faculties which are to be called into daily and hourly exercise--the reasoning powers undisciplined by those mathematical studies which supersede by use the dry and barren rules of logic; the senses unexercised by any of those sciences of observation which add to the exact study of nature; the habit of arrangement and classification so important in all the business of life, and equally unpractised in those sciences of experiment which so happily combine the most unexpected revelations of the great secrets of nature with the most subtle and refined processes of analysis, and the most strict and convincing trains of reasoning.

Deeply convinced, as I am, that this practical training of all the faculties of the mind, by studies peculiarly fitted to exercise them, ought to form a constituent part of all education (not excepting even the education of that profession to whom classical studies are peculiarly important), I cannot but congratulate the members of my own profession on the coincidence of the scheme of study which has been laid down by the examining bodies with that which reason and common sense would prescribe. I think, too, that if time permitted, I might adduce many and striking examples of the admirable preparation which the studies of the medical man have formed, for other practical and scientific pursuits, to which circumstances or his own inclination have led him.

I feel that, in the short and imperfect observations which I have been led to make on the true influence of scientific pursuits in reference to religion, I lay myself open to the charge of having discussed the subject with a brevity unsuited to its surpassing importance. But those who feel with me that science (and medical science more espe

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If, in vindicating science in general, and the study of medicine in particular, from what I conceive to be unjust and unfounded aspersions, I have weakened arguments which I have heard advanced even within these walls, I have the satisfaction of feeling that the general argument in favour of moral discipline and religious training, as applied to students of all denominations, will still remain in all its unshaken firmness, while scientific and medical studies will have been rescued from that exceptional position to which they had been degraded, and in which they have been too long suffered to remain.

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delivered by Mr. Paget. The subject of it was The introductory address at this institution was "The Motives to Industry in the Study of Medicine." He urged the motive of self-interest, in that it was by industry alone that the enjoyment of even a moderate degree of success could be attained; but insisted much more strongly on the motives arising from the duty of cultivating the mind for employment in benefiting others-from the great responsibility of the medical practitioner and from the pleasures arising from the pursuit of a science which is eminently difficult, various, and useful, and which leads to the knowledge of the noblest of the Creator's works. He mentioned, also, several motives to industry connected with the arrangements of the Hospital and College, and alluded to the eminent attainments of many distinguished members of the profession, who had received their Mr. Paget concluded an eloquent and feeling ad medical and surgical education at the Hospital. dress by exhorting the students to caution, lest the in any measure tainted by selfishness, cunning, or knowledge which industry would acquire should be irreligion. The theatre was crowded by the former and present students of the Hospital, and the oration was received with frequent applause. After the lecture the visitors adjourned to the large hall of the Institution, where a conversazione was held, and tea and coffee were partaken of.

Aristotle would appear to have almost approximated to the discovery of the circulation. He says, "The heart is the origin and source of the blood; and as in watering gardens the water is conveyed in numerous rivulets from one origin or fountain, so has nature conducted the blood in streams throughout the whole body, for the blood is the elementary matter of all other parts.”

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UNIVERSITY COLLEGE.

The introductory address at this school was delivered by Dr. MURPHY, the Professor of Mid-wifery.

The lecturer commenced with a brief outline of the studies connected with medicine-botany, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, pathology; and the observation of disease proving the scientific character of medicine as a study, and its ennobling tendency as a pursuit, from which the inference was drawn, that among the scientific professions, medicine should hold an equal rank with the highest. * Some of the causes of its depression-those most easily corrected-were assigned, viz., a deficient education, both general and professional. The means of correcting the former rests with those who have the control of medical education. A competent general education should be rendered imperative on the student seeking admission to the course of studies necessary to the medical profession. The high value placed on a liberal education in other professions (as the Church and the Bar) was pointed out.

The correction of a deficient professional education rests with the student himself, who has every means at his hand to facilitate his progress. To assist him in this object some errors were pointed out for his avoidance. A mistaken idea of the object of his medical education, viz., that of merely passing his examination; the abuse to which this mistake has led in the mode of preparing for examinations. The necessity of studying the profession for its own sake was insisted upon; a sound knowledge of his profession being a much better security to the student for success in after life than a license to practise.

Abstract study the habit of withdrawing his attention from surrounding objects, and seeking to gather from books the knowledge which only should be derived from observation-should be avoided; the value of clinical study pointed out. Theorizing on a few facts a very common error; its evil effects on medicine, in giving rise to overheated and useless controversies, were alluded to. Assumption of facts should also be guarded against. Illustrations of this error derived from morbid anatomy. The necessity for caution, espeecially with the microscope, which in unaccustomed hands produces numerous false facts.

A very brief allusion was then made to surgery and to midwifery, as branches of medicine. In surgery the importance of a high cultivation of the sentient faculties was pointed out; not only must the eye be acute, but the hand adroit; and, for this purpose, the habit of dissection is essential. The orator then alluded to midwifery, which, he said, is a branch of medicine too much neglected. He commented on the belief that, because midwifery is easily practised, it needs little attention, and pointed out the fatal consequences of neglecting its study.

Dr. Murphy concluded an eloquent address by exhorting the students to study their profession with perseverance and zeal, and alluded to the rewards which such a course would bring with it, in contradistinction to the after-remorse entailed on the unwary, who allows himself to be seduced by idleness and dissipation.

CHARLOTTE-STREET SCHOOL OF ME

DICINE.

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE, BY MR, DERMOTT. The lecturer, after congratulating his pupils upon meeting them again, alluded to the rapid strides that structural anatomy and organic chemistry have made of late years, and pointed out the necessity for all medical men to advance with the times in these two branches of medical science.

He observed that not many years since the real nature of membranes, mucous, serous, and synovial, the intimate structure of the elementary muscular and nervous fibre, were not known; the structure of glands was scarcely more than guessed at; transcendental anatomy was scarcely taught or studied, and the subject of organic chemistry rarely broached in the anatomical lectures. He then expatiated upon the state of the medical profession as follows:

can do, viz., to judge of the comparative medical merits of candidates. Thus the vast majority are deceived by mere hearsay,' which at best is a most treacherous informant, and thus are the governors made the mere tools of the medical

"I shall now say a few words upon the medical profession as it is, and as it ought to be. It is my duty, if you come to my market, to sell you a good commodity in the form of genuine instruction; but I shall also make it a point of propriety this day to tell you what use you can make of your know-officers already in power. ledge, in the present state of the profession, when you have acquired it; what use you cannot make of it, and what use you ought to be able to make of it, and would be able, if the unjust obstacles attributable to the non-existence of wholesome medical legislation were thoroughly removed.

"Let us examine, without prejudice, how they manage these things in France.

"In France, concours for the election of professors and members of the examining boards are conducted in the following manner:-The dean of the faculty summons a meeting of the professors, and a committee is selected from amongst them by lot; these-about a dozen individuals, sometimes lessact as a jury, and they are all sworn to perform their duty with impartiality. Notice of the forthcoming trial of intellectual strength is given in the public prints-and even placarded in the streetsand the public are indiscriminately admitted to the Great Amphitheatre of the Faculty of Medicine, whilst the candidates are reserved in another room. The concours opens by each member of the jury placing in an urn a slip of paper with some topic named upon it.

"There are this day a great many very splendid falsehoods told, by very fine persons bedecked with black gowns, and in very fine places furnished with corridors, flights of steps, and so forth, that dazzle and bamboozle the uninitiated pupil. They will tell you, perhaps, what Hunter did, the immortal eminence he attained, and that emolument and fame lie before you ready for your grasp. But these are untruths, gentlemen, and most cruel untruths, because they are calculated to deceive you; and those who are the promulgators of them are fully aware that ere long sad experience will prove to you that what I am about to tell you is but too "Each candidate-the eldest first-draws his lot, true. I do not want to discourage you, but we and is to deliver a lecture, without referring to must know the malignant evils which corrupt books, and with a quarter of an hour's meditation medical society in order to get rid of them, and you upon the subject thus drawn. The concurrents are should not be deceived by delusive prospects. next required to write theses; and while each, on the These professors,' gentlemen, in their introduc-appointed day, reads his thesis, his views are open to tory lectures, point to a fallacious meteor-they tell the disputation of his fellow-competitors, and, as he you of the bright sunshine of public approbation; is examined by them on all topics connected with but when you arrive at the summit of the eminence it, it is of course their interest to expose every deyou find a deep and dark gulf of monopoly sepa- ficiency in their rival candidates. These wranglings rating you from the object for which you first sometimes last several days. started--the reward of public favour and reasonable pecuniary emolument. Great fees, golden tolls, family patronage, are the passports over this gulf of corruption, as though talent, family interest, morality, and money were generally or even necessarily combined in the same individual.

"Concours for the election of physicians and surgeons to hospitals, &c., are of a somewhat more practical character, varying according to the species of ability required for the duties of the office. Cases are produced upon which the candidates are publicly to make their diagnoses and comments, "We have the temple of Esculapius choked up by and for which they have to prescribe; they have hereditarily privileged men-our Drs. Plausible and also publicly to perform and describe the various Feasible-and the avenues leading to the same by surgical operations. The plan of concours necestheir protégés. We have the golden bar of exclu-sarily excludes all men from public appointments siveness put up between the mass of pupils at large who do not possess fit and even superior attainand the favoured few. The industrious pupils, after ments. spending their money and time in London, return from the metropolis in shoals with empty pockets, heartless, and prospectless, and are in mockery told that the profession is overstocked. Some, having no solid reward in sight as a stimulus to study (such as society is in moral duty bound to hold out), sink into idleness and dissipation; whilst the least meritorious, the most monied and familypatronised, pass through the wicket and over the suspension-bridge of monopoly.

"This is absolutely the state of the medical profession. We have dresserships, house-surgeoncies, appointments in the army and navy, lectureships, physicianships and surgeoncies to public institutions, and in fact to all medical offices of public trust (as well as the lucrative practices connected with such ill-gotten distinctions), obtained by purchase, private patronage, and chicanery. Personal solicitations, begging or canvassing from door to door, sycophantish placards and advertisements, are had recourse to a system which degrades the medical man below the most paltry shopkeeper whose favour he solicits-is a blasphemy and insult to the very name of science, and reduces the whole of the profession to a placarding, favour-begging, and advertising body of the lowest and most servile stamp. As results of this system we have the dastardly board-room brawls and intrigue of party and private interest, whence spring the horrid jealousies, narrow-minded feelings, and bad actions which dishonour the medical profession, and which proved the deathblow even of John Hunter.

"There is, in our present system, encouragement to vice, and discouragement to morality; there is preferment without talent, not preferment as the result of it. Our universities and hospitals are so many rotten boroughs,' where a system of favouritism and private interest is fostered; and thus are science and human life, in this country, made the victims of private interest and party cabal.

"We have the non-medical governors of our institutions called upon to do what it is impossible they

"Let us refer to the evidence of Mr. King, given before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry into Medical Education in the year 1834. He stated that during his professional career in Paris he obtained many professional honorary appointments. He obtained the distinction of being a member of the Ecole Pratique, at the first concours, on the first attempt.

"He next obtained, by a similar concours, an appointment as dresser at the public hospitals; and after that he competed for the prizes which are given every year, after public concours, to the members of the Ecole Pratique.

"At the end of his first year's study as one of those members, had a vacancy occurred, he had a right to compete for the office of aide d'anatomie; and had he obtained such an office he would then have had the right to compete for the office of prosector to the faculty; but, as no such a vacancy occurred, the next year he competed for the interne, which is somewhat similar to the office of house-surgeon in our hospitals, and, on the second concours, he obtained the nomination of provisionary interne. In the following year, on the third concours in the hospitals, he was elected the second of the internes at the Hôtel Dieu. At the time Mr. King was elected he had the good fortune to be unanimously chosen ; and his name being most conspicuously an English one, and the trial public, the question arose, and was afterwards considered in the council of the hospital administration, whether or not, being a foreigner, he was eligible.

"After some deliberation it was decided that foreigners should be admitted to the concours, and that they were eligible; and the expressions used by the reporter on that occasion were, "That the council being influenced by motives of a high national order, had, in their wisdom, declared, that France was the country of all the talents that would honour and serve her.'

"At the end of each year Mr. King obtained a prize; and during his service at the hospitals he

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