The search for the explanation of diseased states
in modified cell-life; the discovery of the important
part played by parasitic organisms in the aetiology
of disease; the elucidation of the action of medicaments
by the methods and the data of experimental physiology;
appear to me to be the greatest steps which have ever
been made towards the establishment of medicine on
a scientific basis. I need hardly say they could
not have been made except for the advance of normal
biology.
There can be no question, then, as to the nature or
the value of the connection between medicine and the
biological sciences. There can be no doubt that
the future of pathology and of therapeutics, and,
therefore, that of practical medicine, depends upon
the extent to which those who occupy themselves with
these subjects are trained in the methods and impregnated
with the fundamental truths of biology.
And, in conclusion, I venture to suggest that the
collective sagacity of this congress could occupy
itself with no more important question than with this:
How is medical education to be arranged, so that,
without entangling the student in those details of
the systematist which are valueless to him, he may
be enabled to obtain a firm grasp of the great truths
respecting animal and vegetable life, without which,
notwithstanding all the progress of scientific medicine,
he will still find himself an empiric?
* * * *
*
Footnotes:
[1] Discours de la Methode, 6e partie, Ed.
Cousin, p. 193.
[2] Ibid. pp. 193 and 211.
[3] De la Formation du Foetus.
[4] Theoria Generationis, 1759.
[5] Anatomie generale, i. p. liv.
THE SCHOOL BOARDS: WHAT THEY CAN DO, AND WHAT
THEY MAY DO.
[1870]
An electioneering manifesto would be out of place
in the pages of this Review; but any suspicion that
may arise in the mind of the reader that the following
pages partake of that nature, will be dispelled, if
he reflect that they cannot be published [1] until
after the day on which the ratepayers of the metropolis
will have decided which candidates for seats upon
the Metropolitan School Board they will take, and which
they will leave.
As one of those candidates, I may be permitted to
say, that I feel much in the frame of mind of the
Irish bricklayer’s labourer, who bet another
that he could not carry him to the top of the ladder
in his hod. The challenged hodman won his wager,
but as the stakes were handed over, the challenger
wistfully remarked, “I’d great hopes of
falling at the third round from the top.”
And, in view of the work and the worry which awaits
the members of the School Boards, I must confess to
an occasional ungrateful hope that the friends who
are toiling upwards with me in their hod, may, when
they reach “the third round from the top,”
let me fall back into peace and quietness.
