subject in touch with practical medicine, though the flower of the army, the imperial guard, are busy elsewhere."[1] This same consideration would appear conclusive as to the wisdom of crediting the medical student with such subjects when pursued in a college of liberal arts. Physiology, for instance, as an element of a liberal education, sweeps the whole horizon impartially, interested in genetic processes, searching for general laws. It works to best advantage with simple forms,—with jellyfish and cats in preference to man: an admirable introduction to medical physiology, but not really the same thing. It does not follow, therefore, that because professional studies are now freely counted toward the bachelor's degree, ordinary college work in physiology is equally satisfactory to the medical school. The academic purpose is vague; the professional purpose, distinct; and a medical education is more than the sum of its constituent courses taken separately and without reference to their ultimate object.[2]
So much for the point of view; certain general considerations affect equally instruction in all these laboratory sciences. The medical laboratories must be manned, equipped, and organized like university laboratories devoted to non-medical subjects. The laboratory staff consists necessarily of a chief—the professor in charge—with a corps of paid assistants, cooperating with him in the work of teaching, busy at other times with their problems, as he is with his, and with at least one intelligent departmental helper (Diener) who will relieve the staff of the care and handling of apparatus and material. The needs of pharmacology are in these respects not different from those of physics; and the pharmacologist can as little make the teaching of pharmacology a side issue to the practice of medicine or the conduct of a drug store as the physicist can subordinate his academic duties to the operation of a trolley line. Hardly less urgent is an adequate material equipment: class-rooms, laboratories for class use, private rooms adapted to the independent work of the staff, a reference library in regular receipt of important publications, and proper quarters for caring for an abundant and varied supply of animals.[3]
In methods of instruction there is, once more, nothing to distinguish medical from other sciences. Out-and-out didactic treatment is hopelessly antequated; it belongs
- ↑ W. H. Howell: "The Present Problems of Physiology," Congress of Arts and Sciences, vol. v. p. 434. More concretely. Professor F. S. Lee (Columbia University), in discussing the medical curriculum, wrote: "Many experiments of merely technical physiological interest should be omitted, especially those that have only a remote connection with human physiology. ... (In physiological chemistry] pathological constituents [of tissues and secretions] and changes should be touched upon." Professor Matthews (University of Chicago) took the opposite position. "As soon as possible these sciences should follow the example of physics, botany, and chemistry and leave the medical faculty and be regarded as subjects prerequisite to the study of medicine." The analogy seems hardly valid; physics and chemistry are, from the standpoint of medicine, of merely instrumental value. The medical sciences are not simply instrumental; they deal with the actual phenomena and material which the physician handles. Professor Lee employs pathological cases to illustrate and enrich his course in physiology at Columbia. The contrast between normal and abnormal deepens the student's impression of both.
- ↑ The same problem presents itself in the German university. See Paulsen, loc. cit., pp. 411, 412.
- ↑ An utterly mistaken notion prevails as to the extent to which animal experimentation is practised in this country. Only a very small minority of our medical schools use animals at all; as a matter of fact, ordinary medical teaching suffers seriously from the failure to employ them.
