it is the quality, the nature of the knowledge, which I quarrel with.
I know I used to have--I don't know whether I have now, but I had once
upon a time--a bad reputation among students for setting up a very
high standard of acquirement, and I dare say you may think that the
standard of this old examiner, who happily is now very nearly an
extinct examiner, has been pitched too high. Nothing of the kind, I
assure you. The defects I have noticed, and the faults I have to find,
arise entirely from the circumstance that my standard is pitched too
low. This is no paradox, gentlemen, but quite simply the fact.
The knowledge I have looked for was a real, precise, thorough, and
practical knowledge of fundamentals; whereas that which the best of
the candidates, in a large proportion of cases, have had to give me
was a large, extensive, and inaccurate knowledge of superstructure;
and that is what I mean by saying that my demands went too low,
and not too high. What I have had to complain of is, that a large
proportion of the gentlemen who come up for physiology to the
University of London do not know it as they know their anatomy, and
have not been taught it as they have been taught their anatomy. Now, I
should not wonder at all if I heard a great many "No, noes" here; but
I am not talking about University College; as I have told you before,
I am talking about the average education of medical schools. What I
have found, and found so much reason to lament, is, that while anatomy
has been taught as a science ought to be taught, as a matter of
autopsy, and observation, and strict discipline; in a very large
number of cases, physiology has been taught as if it were a mere
matter of books and of hearsay. I declare to you, gentlemen, that
I have often expected to be told, when I have been asked a question
about the circulation of the blood, that Professor Breitkopf is
of opinion that it circulates, but that the whole thing is an open
question. I assure you that I am hardly exaggerating the state of mind