t the anatomist has furnished him with indispensable data,
that the physiologist has sometimes put him on the track of new modes of
treatment, that the chemist has isolated the active principles of his
medicines, has taught him how to combine them, has from time to time
offered him new remedial agencies, and so of others of his allies. But he
will also tell you, if I am not mistaken, that his own branch of
knowledge is so extensive and so perplexing that he must accept most of
his facts ready made at their hands. He will own to you that in the
struggle for life which goes on day and night in our thoughts as in the
outside world of nature, much that he learned under the name of science
has died out, and that simple homely experience has largely taken the
place of that scholastic knowledge to which he and perhaps some of his
instructors once attached a paremount importance.

This, then, is my view of scientific training as conducted in courses
such as you are entering on. Up to a certain point I believe in set
Lectures as excellent adjuncts to what is far more important, practical
instruction at the bedside, in the operating room, and under the eye of
the Demonstrator. But I am so far from wishing these courses extended,
that I think some of them--suppose I say my own--would almost bear
curtailing. Do you want me to describe more branches of the sciatic and
crural nerves? I can take Fischer's plates, and lecturing on that scale
fill up my whole course and not finish the nerves alone. We must stop
somewhere, and for my own part I think the scholastic exercises of our
colleges have already claimed their full share of the student's time
without our seeking to extend them.

I trust I have vindicated the apparent inconsequence of teaching young
students a good deal that seems at first sight profitless, but which
helps them to learn and retain what is profitable. But this is an
inquisitive age, and if we insist on piling up beyond a certain height
knowledge which is in itself mere trash and lumber to a man whose life is
to be one long fight with death and disease, there will be some sharp
questions asked by and by, and our quick-witted people will perhaps find
they can get along as well without the professor's cap as without the
bishop's mitre and the monarch's crown.

I myself have nothing to do with clinical teaching. Yet I do not
hesitate to say it is more essential than all the rest put together, so
far as the ordinary pr