uxley himself was originally a medical man; all through his life he
was chiefly interested in the biological sciences which underlie a
scientific practice of medicine, and as teacher and examiner he had
much to do with the shaping of medical education in London. Acting in
various public capacities, as a member of commissions dealing with
medical education, or as a witness before them, in magazine articles
and in public speeches he made many contributions to the problems to
be faced in medical education. Some of these related to the conditions
peculiar to medical training in London. In the greatest city of the
world there was during Huxley's life and there is still nothing
comparable with the great universities of Europe and America, of
Scotland and Ireland. Some dozen hospitals, supported partly by
endowments, partly by charities, attempt each to maintain a complete,
independent medical school. As the requirements of medical education
in staff, laboratories, and general equipment has advanced, these
hospitals have made heroic efforts to advance with them.
Notwithstanding the zeal and public spirit of the staff and managers
of the hospitals, this want of system has naturally resulted in a
multiplication of inefficient institutions and a number of makeshift
arrangements. Huxley repeatedly urged the concentration of all this
diffuse effort into a few centres, but this inevitable reform has not
yet become possible.

A second important consideration, and one that has a much wider
application, relates to the kind of person by whom the scientific
sides of medical teaching should be given. Primitively, all the
instruction to medical students was given by those actually engaged in
the practice of medicine. Huxley was strongly of the opinion that the
teachers of anatomy, physiology, chemistry, and so forth, should be
specialists devoted to these subjects for life, and not merely
surgeons and physicians who engaged in teaching until their practice
grew sufficiently to monopolise their attention.

"I get every year," he said, "the elaborate reports of Henle and
Meissner--volumes of I suppose 400 pages altogether--and they
consist merely of abstracts of the memoirs and works which have
been written on Anatomy and Physiology--only abstracts of them.
How is a man to keep up his acquaintance with all that is doing
in the physiological world--in a world advancing with enormous
strides every day and e