dormant and wholly untrained powers of observation and of manipulation.
It is difficult to over-estimate the magnitude of the obstacles which
are thrown in the way of scientific training by the existing system of
school education. Not only are men trained in mere book-work, ignorant
of what observation means, but the habit of learning from books alone
begets a disgust of observation. The book-learned student will rather
trust to what he sees in a book than to the witness of his own eyes.

There is not the least reason why this should be so, and, in fact, when
elementary education becomes that which I have assumed it ought to be,
this state of things will no longer exist. There is not the slightest
difficulty in giving sound elementary instruction in physics, in
chemistry, and in the elements of human physiology, in ordinary
schools. In other words, there is no reason why the student should not
come to the medical school, provided with as much knowledge of these
several sciences as he ordinarily picks up in the course of his first
year of attendance at the medical school.

I am not saying this without full practical justification for the
statement. For the last eighteen years we have had in England a system
of elementary science teaching carried out under the auspices of the
Science and Art Department, by which elementary scientific instruction
is made readily accessible to the scholars of all the elementary
schools in the country. Commencing with small beginnings, carefully
developed and improved, that system now brings up for examination as
many as seven thousand scholars in the subject of human physiology
alone. I can say that, out of that number, a large proportion have
acquired a fair amount of substantial knowledge; and that no
inconsiderable percentage show as good an acquaintance with human
physiology as used to be exhibited by the average candidates for