Proposals have recently been made to get rid of general examinations
altogether, to permit the student to be examined in each subject at the
end of his attendance on the class; and then, in case of the result
being satisfactory, to allow him to have done with it; and I may say
that this method has been pursued for many years in the Royal School of
Mines in London, and has been found to work very well. It allows the
student to concentrate his mind upon what he is about for the time
being, and then to dismiss it. Those who are occupied in intellectual
work, will, I think, agree with me that it is important, not so much to
know a thing, as to have known it, and known it thoroughly. If you have
once known a thing in this way it is easy to renew your knowledge when
you have forgotten it; and when you begin to take the subject up again,
it slides back upon the familiar grooves with great facility.

Lastly comes the question as to how the university may co-operate in
advancing medical education. A medical school is strictly a technical
school--a school in which a practical profession is taught--while a
university ought to be a place in which knowledge is obtained without
direct reference to professional purposes. It is clear, therefore, that
a university and its antecedent, the school, may best co-operate with
the medical school by making due provision for the study of those
branches of knowledge which lie at the foundation of medicine.

At present, young men come to the medical schools without a conception
of even the elements of physical science; they learn, for the first
time, that there are such sciences as physics, chemistry, and
physiology, and are introduced to anatomy as a new thing. It may be
safely said that, with a large proportion of medical students, much of
the first session is wasted in learning how to learn--in familiarising
themselves with utterly strange conceptions, and in awakening their