university and the hospital should co-operate in the promotion of
medical education. The trustees will unquestionably take the best
advice that is to be had as to the construction and administration of
the hospital. In respect to the former point, they will doubtless
remember that a hospital may be so arranged as to kill more than it
cures; and, in regard to the latter, that a hospital may spread the
spirit of pauperism among the well-to-do, as well as relieve the
sufferings of the destitute. It is not for me to speak on these
topics--rather let me confine myself to the one matter on which my
experience as a student of medicine, and an examiner of long standing,
who has taken a great interest in the subject of medical education, may
entitle me to a hearing. I mean the nature of medical education itself,
and the co-operation of the university in its promotion.

What is the object of medical education? It is to enable the
practitioner, on the one hand, to prevent disease by his knowledge of
hygiene; on the other hand, to divine its nature, and to alleviate or
cure it, by his knowledge of pathology, therapeutics, and practical
medicine. That is his business in life, and if he has not a thorough
and practical knowledge of the conditions of health, of the causes
which tend to the establishment of disease, of the meaning of symptoms,
and of the uses of medicines and operative appliances, he is
incompetent, even if he were the best anatomist, or physiologist, or
chemist, that ever took a gold medal or won a prize certificate. This
is one great truth respecting medical education. Another is, that all
practice in medicine is based upon theory of some sort or other; and
therefore, that it is desirable to have such theory in the closest
possible accordance with fact. The veriest empiric who gives a drug in
one case because he has seen it do good in another of apparently the
same sort, acts upon the theory that similarity of superficial symptoms