n man in a pea-jacket and a sou'wester,
who knows the channel of Boston Harbor, and the rocks of Boston Harbor,
and the distinguished Professor is quite of my mind as to the matter, for
I took the pains to ask him before I ventured to use his name in the way
of illustration."

I do not know how the remarks of the image-breaker may strike others, but
I feel that they put me on my defence with regard to much of my teaching.
Some years ago I ventured to show in an introductory Lecture how very
small a proportion of the anatomical facts taught in a regular course, as
delivered by myself and others, had any practical bearing whatever on the
treatment of disease. How can I, how can any medical teacher justify
himself in teaching anything that is not like to be of practical use to a
class of young men who are to hold in their hands the balance in which
life and death, ease and anguish, happiness and wretchedness are to be
daily weighed?

I hope we are not all wrong. Oftentimes in finding how sadly ignorant of
really essential and vital facts and rules were some of those whom we had
been larding with the choicest scraps of science, I have doubted whether
the old one-man system of teaching, when the one man was of the right
sort, did not turn out better working physicians than our more elaborate
method. The best practitioner I ever knew was mainly shaped to
excellence in that way. I can understand perfectly the regrets of my
friend Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh, for the good that was lost with the
old apprenticeship system. I understand as well Dr. Latham's fear "that
many men of the best abilities and good education will be deterred from
prosecuting physic as a profession, in consequence of the necessity
indiscriminately laid upon all for impossible attainments."

I feel therefore impelled to say a very few words in defence of that
system of teaching adopted in our Colleges, by which we wish to
supplement and complete the instruction given by private individuals or
by what are often called Summer Schools.

The reason why we teach so much that is not practical and in itself
useful, is because we find that the easiest way of teaching what is
practical and useful. If we could in any way eliminate all that would
help a man to deal successfully with disease, and teach it by itself so
that it should be as tenaciously rooted in the memory, as easily summoned
when wanted, as fertile in suggestion of related facts, as satisfactory
to