within easy reach of the highest scientific
instruction. The business of a school like this is to make useful
working physicians, and to succeed in this it is almost as important not
to overcrowd the mind of the pupil with merely curious knowledge as it
is to store it with useful information.

In this direction I have written my lecture, not to undervalue any form
of scientific labor in its place, an unworthy thought from which I hope
I need not defend myself,--but to discourage any undue inflation of the
scholastic programme, which even now asks more of the student than the
teacher is able to obtain from the great majority of those who present
themselves for examination. I wish to take a hint in education from the
Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, who regards the
cultivation of too much land as a great defect in our New England
farming. I hope that our Medical Institutions may never lay themselves
open to the kind of accusation Mr. Lowe brings against the English
Universities, when he says that their education is made up "of words
that few understand and most will shortly forget; of arts that can never
be used, if indeed they can even be learnt; of histories inapplicable to
our times; of languages dead and even mouldy; of grammatical rules
that never had living use and are only post mortem examinations; and of
statements fagoted with utter disregard of their comparative value."

This general thought will be kept in view throughout my somewhat
discursive address, which will begin with an imaginary clinical lesson
from the lips of an historical personage, and close with the portrait
from real life of one who, both as teacher and practitioner, was long
loved and honored among us. If I somewhat overrun my hour, you must
pardon me, for I can say with Pascal that I have not had the time to
make my lecture shorter.

In the year 1647, that good man John Eliot, commonly called the Apostle
Eliot, writing to Mr. Thomas Shepherd, the pious minister of Cambridge,
referring to the great need of medical instruction for the Indians, used
these words:

"I have thought in my heart that it were a singular good work, if
the Lord would stirre up the hearts of some or other of his people
in England to give some maintenance toward some Schoole or Collegiate
exercise this way, wherein there should be Anatomies and other
instructions that way, and where there might be some recompence given to
any that should bring in an