no further than the length of that list of forms which I have enumerated.  If a man knows the structure of the animals I have mentioned, he has a clear and exact, however limited apprehension of the essential features of the organization of all those great divisions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms to which the forms I have mentioned severally belong.  And it then becomes possible to him to read with profit; because every time he meets with the name of a structure, he has a definite image in his mind of what the name means in the particular creature he is reading about, and therefore the reading is not mere reading.  It is not mere repetition of words; but every term employed in the description, we will say of a horse, or of an elephant, will call up the image of the things he had seen in the rabbit, and he is able to form a distinct conception of that which he has not seen, as a modification of that which he has seen.”

Huxley himself was originally a medical man; all through his life he was chiefly interested in the biological sciences which underlie a scientific practice of medicine, and as teacher and examiner he had much to do with the shaping of medical education in London.  Acting in various public capacities, as a member of commissions dealing with medical education, or as a witness before them, in magazine articles and in public speeches he made many contributions to the problems to be faced in medical education.  Some of these related to the conditions peculiar to medical training in London.  In the greatest city of the world there was during Huxley’s life and there is still nothing comparable with the great universities of Europe and America, of Scotland and Ireland.  Some dozen hospitals, supported partly by endowments, partly by charities, attempt each to maintain a complete, independent medical school.  As the requirements of medical education in staff, laboratories, and general equipment has advanced, these hospitals have made heroic efforts to advance with them.  Notwithstanding the zeal and public spirit of the staff and managers of the hospitals, this want of system has naturally resulted in a multiplication of inefficient institutions and a number of makeshift arrangements.  Huxley repeatedly urged the concentration of all this diffuse effort into a few centres, but this inevitable reform has not yet become possible.

A second important consideration, and one that has a much wider application, relates to the kind of person by whom the scientific sides of medical teaching should be given.  Primitively, all the instruction to medical students was given by those actually engaged in the practice of medicine.  Huxley was strongly of the opinion that the teachers of anatomy, physiology, chemistry, and so forth, should be specialists devoted to these subjects for life, and not merely surgeons and physicians who engaged in teaching until their practice grew sufficiently to monopolise their attention.