with the subject; but I might fortify myself by the authority of the
President of the College of Surgeons, Mr. Quain, whom I heard the other
day in an admirable address (the Hunterian Oration) deal fully and
wisely with this very topic[3].

A young man commencing the study of medicine is at once required to
endeavour to make an acquaintance with a number of sciences, such as
Physics, as Chemistry, as Botany, as Physiology, which are absolutely
and entirely strange to him, however excellent his so-called education
at school may have been. Not only is he devoid of all apprehension of
scientific conceptions, not only does he fail to attach any meaning to
the words "matter," "force," or "law" in their scientific senses, but,
worse still, he has no notion of what it is to come into contact with
nature, or to lay his mind alongside of a physical fact, and try to
conquer it, in the way our great naval hero told his captains to master
their enemies. His whole mind has been given to books, and I am hardly
exaggerating if I say that they are more real to him than Nature. He
imagines that all knowledge can be got out of books, and rests upon the
authority of some master or other; nor does he entertain any misgiving
that the method of learning which led to proficiency in the rules of
grammar, will suffice to lead him to a mastery of the laws of Nature.
The youngster, thus unprepared for serious study, is turned loose among
his medical studies, with the result, in nine cases out of ten, that the
first year of his curriculum is spent in learning how to learn. Indeed,
he is lucky, if at the end of the first year, by the exertions of his
teachers and his own industry, he has acquired even that art of arts.
After which there remain not more than three, or perhaps four, years for
the profitable study of such vast sciences as Anatomy, Physiology,
Therapeutics, Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics, and the like, upon his
knowledge or ignorance of which it depends whether the practitioner