it that the burden
on the young aspirant for the medical profession is somewhat of the
heaviest, and that it needs some care to prevent his intellectual back
from being broken.

Those who are acquainted with the existing systems of medical education
will observe that, long as is the catalogue of studies which I have
enumerated, I have omitted to mention several that enter into the usual
medical curriculum of the present day. I have said not a word about
zoology, comparative anatomy, botany, or materia medica. Assuredly this
is from no light estimate of the value or importance of such studies in
themselves. It may be taken for granted that I should be the last person
in the world to object to the teaching of zoology, or comparative
anatomy, in themselves; but I have the strongest feeling that,
considering the number and the gravity of those studies through which a
medical man must pass, if he is to be competent to discharge the serious
duties which devolve upon him, subjects which lie so remote as these do
from his practical pursuits should be rigorously excluded. The young
man, who has enough to do in order to acquire such familiarity with the
structure of the human body as will enable him to perform the operations
of surgery, ought not, in my judgment, to be occupied with
investigations into the anatomy of crabs and starfishes. Undoubtedly the
doctor should know the common poisonous plants of his own country when
he sees them; but that knowledge may be obtained by a few hours devoted
to the examination of specimens of such plants, and the desirableness of
such knowledge is no justification, to my mind, for spending three
months over the study of systematic botany. Again, materia medica, so
far as it is a knowledge of drugs, is the business of the druggist. In
all other callings the necessity of the division of labour is fully
recognised, and it is absurd to require of the medical man that he
should not avail himself of the special knowledge of those whose
business it is to deal in the drugs which he uses. It is all very well
that the physician should know that castor oil comes from a plant, and
castoreum from an animal, and how they are to be prepared; but for all
the practical purposes of his profession that knowledge is not of one
whit more value, has no more relevancy, than the knowledge of how the
steel of his scalpel is made.

All knowledge is good. It is impossible to say that any fragment of
knowledge, however