men of ability join our medical schools with an eye to the future.
They take the Chairs of Anatomy or of Physiology; and by and by they
leave those Chairs for the more profitable pursuits into which they
have drifted by professional success, and so they become clothed,
and physiology is bare. The result is, that in those schools in which
physiology is thus left to the benevolence, so to speak, of those
who have no time to look to it, the effect of such teaching comes
out obviously, and is made manifest in what I spoke of just now--the
unreality, the bookishness of the knowledge of the taught. And if this
is the case in physiology, still more must it be the case in those
branches of physics which are the foundation of physiology; although
it may be less the case in chemistry, because for an able chemist a
certain honourable and independent career lies in the direction of
his work, and he is able, like the anatomist, to look upon what he
may teach to the student as not absolutely taking him away from his
bread-winning pursuits.

But it is of no use to grumble about this state of things unless
one is prepared to indicate some sort of practical remedy. And I
believe--and I venture to make the statement because I am wholly
independent of all sorts of medical schools, and may, therefore, say
what I believe without being supposed to be affected by any personal
interest--but I say I believe that the remedy for this state of
things, for that imperfection of our theoretical knowledge which keeps
down the ability of England at the present time in medical matters,
is a mere affair of mechanical arrangement; that so long as you have
a dozen medical schools scattered about in different parts of the
metropolis, and dividing the students among them, so long, in all the
smaller schools at any rate, it is impossible that any other state of
things than that which I have been depicting should obtain. Professors