as my conscientious conviction, founded on long experience and reflection, that, if there was not a single physician, surgeon, man-midwife, chemist, apothecary, druggist, nor drug on the face of the earth, there would be less sickness and less mortality than now prevails!”

SECTION IV.-Medical Schools and Colleges-Special Hospitals -General incapacity of teachers-Reaction on the Profession -Opinions of Medical authorities on the subject.

Ir is, perhaps, a pardonable delusion for the general public to entertain—that teachers and professors in Medical Schools and Colleges are men of high capacity, admirably qualified to impart sound instruction, and train the student-mind in the ways of science and truth. The evidence of fact, however, is of a very different character. Such appointments are, indeed, seldom made with exclusive reference—or scarcely any reference at all-to distinguished merit, or approved capacity for conveying instruction. Private influences, intrigues, personal or party considerations, for the most part regulate such offices, and the mere interests of students or of science are rarely consulted.

Then, Medical Schools have been multiplied far beyond the real wants of the profession, and practitioners assume the office of teacher, who are deplorably ignorant themselves. A connection with a School or an Hospital is rarely valued, save as a means of obtaining notoriety-of getting into a position for When Examining trading profitably on public credulity.

Boards have been induced to recognize the certificate of any school, that is all that is required. The lectures are for the most part pretentious imperfections, and clinical instruction, which is the really valuable part of a student's practical education, is seldom in the hands of men who are earnest, and capable, and conscientious in the discharge of their duty.

In the same way, also, Special Hospitals have been increased

to a most mischievous extent. Almost every part of the human body has now its Special Hospital, just as in ancient times. the Egyptian Priest-Physicians had a special deity to preside over some thirty-two divisions of the body, in order to multiply rites, and increase the flow of offerings into their coffers. For practitioners to club together and get up a Special Hospital is regarded as a certain passport to public favour. Their own friends of course aid them, and blow their trumpets, the charitable are wheedled out of subscriptions, and thus while there is unity in disease, there is no unity in teaching or treatment, and the time of students really desirous of learning their profession is frittered away in attending illusory instruction.

This is all caused by the delusion of a silly public, prone to believe that practitioners, because they are attached to some School, Hospital, or College, must necessarily be a grade beyond the common. True, some men of rare genius and distinguished teaching capacity are occasionally found in such situations, but as a rule, mediocre intellect and very common-place acquirements, a prejudiced adherence to preconceived opinions, a contentedness to continue plodding on in a dull routine of duties slovenly discharged, and an invincible hostility to the uncomfortable innovations of new truths are, unhappily, the acknowledged characteristics of the medical teaching power generally of the United Kingdom.

Many years ago the eminent Surgeon Carmichael of Dublin, when presiding over the Medical Association of Ireland, pointed out the evils that had then arisen from the systematic exclusion of highly-qualified men from Hospitals, Schools, and Colleges, and the appointment of the nominees of intrigue and favouritism:

"Those who want talent," said he, "resort to cunning and underhand dealing; therefore we usually find stupidity and trickery go hand in hand.” He complained of "those subtle seniors of the profession upholding, by every means in their power, their aspiring but inefficient allies in the situations which they ought to possess, heedless alike of the injury inflicted on the members of their own profession, and upon society at large.” He denounced the "most baneful system," by which highly educated prac

titioners were kept in the back-ground, and favoured incompetents thrust forward. "Let me ask," he said, "if matters be allowed to take their present course, who would have the hardihood or folly to enter into the medical profession, except by commencing his career as an Apothecary's shop-boy, and snatching such opportunities as may occur to run to the Schools of Medicine to swallow a few mouthfuls of anatomy, and the theory of physic and surgery, that may give him a smattering to support his pretensions ? None others could have a chance of even a moderate livelihood. As it now stands, what gentlemen would permit his son to enter the profession ?"

Few gentlemen do, and so much the worse for the profes sion and the public. It has been noticed as not a little singular how few of the great names of the profession of a few years back are now to be found in it." This betokens, says Dr. Edwin Lee, "that a perfect acquaintance with the state of the profession, and of the drawbacks to be encountered, together with the little value of such success as could be achieved, was quite sufficient to deter the most distinguished members from bringing up their sons to it."* The same writer, in referring to the imperfect practical education which medical students too commonly receive, notices the cause-viz., the frequent inefficiency of the teachers, which, he says, "has of late become more apparent," and considers it absurd to suppose that persons appointed by "indirect, unprofessional agencies, would prove either efficient clinical instructors, or calculated to make the great opportunities afforded by their position available for the promotion of medical science."

There is a unanimity among Medical Journals in representing the evils of the existing system. The Lancet says: "We find feebleness, rottenness, and decay in a system upon which the practical education of the profession depends." "Ignorance and intrigue," says the Medical Times, "take the place of knowledge and worth, alike to the injury of science and humanity. . . In the councils of colleges, and in public institutions, instead of men of originality, of genius, of great discoveries, like Harvey or Hunter, we have a stunted, dwindled,

* State of Med. Prof. further exemplified, p. 52.

degenerate crop of intellect, of mental cripples the offspring of the pernicious atmosphere in which they moved and had their being."

"In many cases," says the Medical Circular, "the teachers are too much engaged in private practice to enable them to devote the necessary time to the instruction of students; but in other instances, and those are unfortunately too numerous, the lecturers do not possess the requisite qualities to make them efficient teach

ers."

Then the unnecessary increase of Schools tends to aggravate the evils of the whole system. "In London, and we doubt not in other places, schools of medicine have been unnaturally forced into existence. A given number of medical men united about a hospital, or elsewhere, have discovered that they wanted to teach medical students. Instead of waiting till the students came to seek their instructions, the instructors, having in view not simply the instruction of the student, but other objects of a kind much more personal to themselves, have sought the students. Wherever this nursery of medical schools into existence has prevailed, no doubt much injury to medical education has resulted. The professors should be made for the chairs, not the chairs for the professors."-British Medical Journal, February 6, 1865.

Dr. Heberden, in his Commentaries, declares that, "of all the once celebrated teachers in the several schools of Europe, very few have furnished us with one new medicine, or have taught us better to use old ones, or have, in any one instance, at all improved the art of curing diseases. Hence, though they have been applauded during the lives of their disciples, yet disinterested and impartial posterity has suffered each succeeding master of this sort to be gathered to his once equally celebrated predecessors, and to be like them, in his turn, equally unread and forgotten."

And this is what "celebrated" schools, and "celebrated teachers," all over Europe, have done for medical science! It is marvellous indeed, that, with such results, Schools should still be on the increase in our own day. Inferiorly educated, and ill-disciplined students are the necessary consequence of inferior