Professors, of inferior teaching, and of a perniciously false system of doctrine, yet almost every hospital is now perverted from its original purpose, and made a medium for the propagandism of school chimeras, to subserve the personal interests of a few medical cliques: "How the Governors of Hospitals were ever inveigled into the movement, we cannot say, but certain it is that, the example once set, every hospital in the metropolis had a call to teach, and now every hospital has its school. Its effects on schools has been to raise six where there should be only one; its effects on teachers has been to raise twenty where there should be only only one; its effects on the election of teachers has been, that lecturers are now systematically propagated, not on the basis of their knowledge, their aptitude, or their love for their work, but often in spite of their grossest defects, on their alliance with particular hospitals, Its effect on education has been, to render that the most stagnant, slipshod, ridicu lous practice ever conceived!"-Social Science Review, Oct., 1862. "Taking the schools altogether, the lecturers (in London) number, in proportion to the students, about one to four and one-third, but in some of the smaller establishments, every two students get a Professor to themselves !" "The struggles of the schools is to secure the greatest number of entries. One of them, last October, had an entry of thirteen students. There are sixteen lecturers at this school!" "A certain number of students have to be milled into examiners, and then passed through the licensing seives into the market, for general consumption. Ordinary students will know that much is not wanted of them, or that, provided they can get their certificates by flattering punctuality in opening their notebooks, they may dream or whistle away the dreary hours of recognised talk, in the confident assurance that too or three months' cram, at last with the convenient college tutor, or recognised grinder, will make all safe for them." -Medical Times, Feb., 1866. "We do affirm, that our schools do turn out numbers of "half-trained, half-educated men," says the Medical Times, and consequently, remarks the Lancet" that the profession is deplorably overstocked is notorious. Everywhere medical men are jostling each other for the merest crumbs of practice and emolument." Thus it is that all interests conspire to degrade the Profession. Schools and Colleges are interested in obtaining the greatest possible number of students; therefore, competition ensures the lowest possible curriculum as an enticement for students to enter. True, they are turned out "half-trained and half-educated," but what of that?-the nineteen licensing corporations greedily compete for them, such as they are eager, for the sake of fees, to license them as "duly qualified practi tioners!" Hence the notorious overstocking of the profession, with all the multitude of abuses that follow. But the evil does not end here, for "the half-trained, halfeducated" of one generation are the teachers of the succeeding, and thus retrogression, not progress, is encouraged. In illustrating the social condition of the United States, George Combe, in his Notes, observes:- "A stream cannot rise higher than its fountain, so, in social life, if the public mind be blind and selfish, the representatives of that mind never rise into the regions of truth and justice." Exactly so with professional life-the student-mind, except in rare instances, will never soar above the teacher-mind, but reflect with a fidelity more or less intense its prejudice, errors, bigotry, conceitedness, and intolerance. Hence it is that the atmosphere of Colleges and Universities has never been favorable to the development of a high order of mind. The discoveries that have enriched science and immortalised illustrious thinkers have not emanated from them. Their tendency is not to encourage the spirit of free intelligence that looks hopefully forward, but to benumb its energies and check its aspirations by chilly overshadowings of the past. What Lord Bacon said two centuries ago of universities is critically true of the medical schools, colleges, and corporate" institutions of to-day: "In the universities all things are found opposite to the advancement of · the sciences; for the readings and exercises are here so managed, that it cannot easily come into any one's mind to think of things out of the common road; or if here and there one should venture to use a liberty of judging, he can only impose the task upon himself without obtaining assistance from his fellows; and, if he could dispense with this, he will still find his industry and resolution a great hindrance to his fortune. For the studies of men in such places are confined and pinned down to the writings of certain authors, from which, if any man happens to differ, he is presently represented as a disturber and innovator." Hence Surgeon Gamgee's remark, that "Medical corporations have been our Nero and Bellarmino, not our Solomon and D Lorenzo il Magnifico." All institutions, indeed, privileged to exist for professional education are so conducted as to subvert the true end of teaching, which is not so much the inculcation of dogmatic opinion, as the training of the mind to a thoughtful examination into the grounds of all opinions. It would seem, however, as if it were their peculiar province to discourage inquiry, to perpetuate mere dogma, secure the reign of a contented mediocrity, and punish, by persecution, in one form or other, any one who would seek to disturb their dreary dulness, just as in Grey's elegy "The moping owl doth to the moon complain, Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, Hence the egotistical self-complacency of teachers, and the approbation won by those who plod patiently along the sanctified highways of authority, no matter how barren the road and comfortless the prospect; and the intolerance with which any turning aside from established sterility is regarded, though the richest pastures of science lie invitingly open. Hence, too, the fatal ascendancy which school dogmatism is enabled to maintain, burthening and repressing intellect like a nightmare-cramping its energies and perverting its impulses. Free thought becomes impossible, mind is condemned to weary itself on an intellectual tread-mill-there is motion to be sure, but no progress-nothing but a perpetual routine of hazy exposition and pretentious elaboration of frivolous verbiage, while great principles are scorned, nature slighted, and truth anathematised. "For the last ten centuries, at least," observes Dr. Dickson, "Professors have been doing little else but splitting straws, blowing bubbles, and giving a mighty great degree of gravity to feathers!" in the same dull round we see them creep, Profoundly trifling-profitlessly deep, Treading the paths their sires before them trod- Professional education of such a character might do very well for parrots and monkeys-to teach the art of repetition and imitation; but assuredly it is not designed to raise up such a generation of medical practitioners as the interests of science and of the public so impressively demand. SECTION V.-Value of Medical Opinion considered-Experience alone an unsafe criterion to judge by-Great knowledge consistent with gross ignorance- Scientific experience testifies against Drug Medication-Admissions of High Medical Authorities, Sir John Forbes, Sir Thomas Watson, &c., concerning the Inutility of Drugging-The Helpless Condition of the Drug School. DEFERENCE to the opinion of Medical men, as such, is alone warranted, on the supposition, that they are really what they pretend to be educated gentlemen, members of a learned profession, with minds trained to observe sagaciously, to discriminate judiciously, and reason logically. But if their educational acquirements would not qualify them to stand on the same platform with pupil-teachers in the village schools of Scotland, as Dr. Alexander Wood affirmed, or enable them to pass an examination for such a civil service appointment as a common lettercarrier, as Sir Dominic Corrigan declared, how is it possible to have faith in their educated judgment, or to repose confidence in their professional opinion? But it may be alleged, that men very ignorant indeed, on entering the profession, acquire knowledge and skill by experience. Perhaps so, yet it would be a fatal error to suppose that any amount of experience necessarily gives wisdom, or imparts skill -renders medical opinion valuable, or its effects salutary in practice. There must be a mind capable of profiting by experience, and then experience itself must be acquired, not in the ways of error, but in the pursuit of truth. These are the imperative conditions necessary to any profit being derived from experi ence. Long and laborious practice in scholastic dialectics made the Schoolmen dexterous sophists and wonderful proficients in metaphysical subtleties, but never revealed to them one vivifying truth contained in the great volume of nature that lay unopened before them. On the contrary, their monotonous experience was altogether in a vicious circle, and only tended to confirm ignorance and deepen prejudice-to contract intellect, and render antipathies to truthful change more inveterate. So with the experience of the great majority of medical men. Guided by false principles, and labouring in pursuit of false systems, what can a life-long experience do for them? It cannot change the essential nature and eternal fitness of things. All the toiling industry and patient plodding of all the medical men that ever lived have not yet succeeded in extorting from nature the secret of one solitary Drug to cure disease! Practice can never make perfect in such a pursuit, an experience thus reaped is, indeed, but "the wisdom of fools!" Operating on trained intelligence, on a candid truth-seeking mind, experience undoubtedly performs a noble office-it corrects the superstitions and errors of early and confiding life—it tests the teaching of maturer years, it passes through the alembic of reason, the dogmas of Schools, the theories of systems, and the crambe bis cocta prelections of collegiate infallibilities—it winnows the wheat from the chaff-vindicates the high prerogatives of mind, and by exploring Nature, discovers truth. But unfortunately, the history of the world shows that it is only a select, and often persecuted few, that have thus endeavoured to make experience available. In ages past, as well as at present, there have been minds so, constituted and cultivated, as to find in experience a true source of knowledge, but they are to be counted as units in comparison with the millions of ill-constituted, ill-cultivated. minds that have only found in experience a confirmation of their prejudices and errors. Hence to the great majority of medical practitioners, Experience performs the same office, and with precisely similar results in the authentication of erroneous pre |