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Science & Education by Thomas Henry Huxley
page 200 of 357 (56%)
certificate, a man may be taken from his home and from his business and
confined in a lunatic asylum; surely, therefore, it is desirable that
the medical practitioner should have some rational and clear
conceptions as to the nature and symptoms of mental disease. Bearing in
mind all these requirements of medical education, you will admit that
the burden on the young aspirant for the medical profession is somewhat
of the heaviest, and that it needs some care to prevent his
intellectual back from being broken.

Those who are acquainted with the existing systems of medical education
will observe that, long as is the catalogue of studies which I have
enumerated, I have omitted to mention several that enter into the usual
medical curriculum of the present day. I have said not a word about
zoology, comparative anatomy, botany, or materia medica. Assuredly this
is from no light estimate of the value or importance of such studies in
themselves. It may be taken for granted that I should be the last
person in the world to object to the teaching of zoology, or
comparative anatomy, in themselves; but I have the strongest feeling
that, considering the number and the gravity of those studies through
which a medical man must pass, if he is to be competent to discharge
the serious duties which devolve upon him, subjects which lie so remote
as these do from his practical pursuits should be rigorously excluded.
The young man, who has enough to do in order to acquire such
familiarity with the structure of the human body as will enable him to
perform the operations of surgery, ought not, in my judgment, to be
occupied with investigations into the anatomy of crabs and starfishes.
Undoubtedly the doctor should know the common poisonous plants of his
own country when he sees them; but that knowledge may be obtained by a
few hours devoted to the examination of specimens of such plants, and
the desirableness of such knowledge is no justification, to my mind,
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