on matters of fundamental importance which I have found over and over
again to obtain, among gentlemen coming up to that picked examination
of the University of London. Now, I do not think that is a desirable
state of things. I cannot understand why physiology should not be
taught--in fact, you have here abundant evidence that it can be
taught--with the same definiteness and the same precision as anatomy
is taught. And you may depend upon this, that the only physiology
which is to be of any good whatever in medical practice, or in its
application to the study of medicine, is that physiology which a man
knows of his own knowledge; just as the only anatomy which would be
of any good to the surgeon is the anatomy which he knows of his own
knowledge. Another peculiarity I have found in the physiology which
has been current, and that is, that in the minds of a great many
gentlemen it has been supplanted by histology. They have learnt a
great deal of histology, and they have fancied that histology and
physiology are the same things. I have asked for some knowledge of the
physics and the mechanics and the chemistry of the human body, and I
have been met by talk about cells. I declare to you I believe it will
take me two years, at least, of absolute rest from the business of
an examiner to hear the word "cell," "germinal matter," or "carmine,"
without a sort of inward shudder.

Well, now, gentlemen, I am sure my colleagues in this examination will
bear me out in saying that I have not been exaggerating the evils and
defects which are current--have been current--in a large quantity
of the physiological teaching, the results of which come before
examiners. And it becomes a very interesting question to know how all
this comes about, and in what way it can be remedied. How it comes
about will be perfectly obvious to any one who has considered the
growth of medicine. I suppose that medicine and surgery first began