_The Crayfish_--Manuals of Anatomy--Modern
Microscopical Methods--Practical Work in Biological
Teaching--Invention of the Type System--Science in Medical
Education--Science and Culture.

Less than half a century ago, there was practically no generally
diffused knowledge of even the elements of science and practically no
provision for teaching it. Medical students, in the course of their
professional education, received some small instruction in botany,
chemistry, and physiology; in the greater universities of England and
the Continent there were not in all a dozen professorships of science
apart from special branches of medicine; in the Scottish universities
there were one or two dreamy chairs of "Natural and Civil History,"
the occupiers of which were supposed to dispense instruction in half a
dozen sciences. There was no scientific teaching at the public
schools; there were practically no books available for beginners in
science, and even the idea of guides to laboratory work had not been
invented. Huxley, addressing in 1854 a particularly select audience in
St. Martin's Hall, London, spoke to them of the

"utter ignorance as to the simplest laws of their own animal
life, which prevails among even the most highly educated persons
in this country." "I am addressing," he said, "I imagine, an
audience of cultivated persons; and yet I dare venture to assert
that, with the exception of those of my hearers who may chance to
have received a medical education, there is not one who could
tell me what is the meaning and use of an act which he performs a
score of times every minute, and whose suspension would involve
his immediate death:--I mean the act of breathing--or who could
state in precise terms why it is that a confined atmosphere is
injurious to health."

The power to express the precise meaning of even a common
physiological act is probably not yet possessed by all educated
people: but no one can doubt that there is now a very generally
diffused knowledge of and interest in the ordinary processes of living
bodies. It is almost impossible for any of us to escape some amount of
scientific education at school, at college, from lectures, or from
books. Certainly those of us who have a natural inclination towards
knowledge of that kind can hardly fail to have the opportunity of
acquiring it. Every library abounds in elementary and advanced
scientifi