"Resolved, That this general meeting of the British Medical Association records its opinion that the results of experiments on living animals have been of inestimable service to man and to the lower animals, and that the continuance and extension of such investigations is essential to the progress of knowledge, the relief of suffering, and the saving of life."

I have thought it worth while not to content myself with broad assertions that experimentation on animals has enabled us to locate with absolute accuracy the various motor functions and to some extent the other functions of the brain; but to any doubting Thomas I would simply say: See any brain operation of this character, and you cannot fail to be convinced of its humanity and propriety.

MEDICAL EDUCATION.*

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE HARVARD MEDICAL ALUMNI ASSOCIATION:

I

ONLY wish that, in accordance with your President's introduction, I could rise to a height of a great argument; but I must be satisfied as nature built me. I am very glad, I assure you, to bring to you the greeting of your Philadelphia brethren. The marble doorsteps of Chestnut Street, so celebrated by Dickens, greet the gilded dome on Beacon Hill, where the descendants of the Pilgrims and the Puritans "live and move and have their beans." It is well known that all of the streets grow grass in profusion; and Philadelphia sometimes, by a sepulchral description, is said to be a well "laid out" city. But I assure you that, when we get together such lively corpses as Mitchell and Wood and Pepper and Hare and Goodell and Wilson and Montgomery, we have a very good time.

Your President was kind enough, in his note asking me to be present on this happy occasion, to propose that I should speak on the subject of Medical Education. It is possibly a well-worn theme, especially before you, who have such elaborate reports, and I am glad to say such encouraging reports, from year to year of the progress of this great School; but there are still some points of value, it seems to me, which we can consider here. I remember very well indeed, in the days of the elder Gross, hearing ad nauseam of medical educa

* An address delivered at the Dinner of the Harvard Medical Alumni Association, June 26, 1894. Reprinted from the Bulletin of the Harvard Medical Alumni Association, June, 1894.

tion and the progress that we ought to make,-bushels of talk and thimblefuls of action; but, after all, when you consider it, these discussions, though they led at that time to very meagre action, were not without their results, and great results, too. They were slowly leavening the whole lump of the profession. They gradually made the profession the support of all the progress that we have seen; and I am sure that the medical schools, even, I believe, Harvard University itself, would never have taken the remarkable steps in advance which the last few years have witnessed, had it not been for that very constant talk, that very constant working of the leaven throughout the profession. I trust the profession. I trust them profoundly. They have ever been better in that respect than the schools till of late.

There has been certainly a remarkable wave of progress passing over this country in the matter of medical education in the last few years. It has been demonstrated, first of all, by the creation of State Boards of Health, and especially by the noble Illinois State Board of Health, a body which has done more for medical education than any other, I believe, in this country, because it fixed an advanced standard. These boards now have been established in almost all the States; and they have been followed by a still more notable advance, namely, the establishment of State Boards of Medical Examiners, wholly independent, as they ought to be, of the medical schools themselves. Again, another very remarkable indication is that our universities and colleges. all over the land are establishing distinct courses leading up to those of the various professional schools, medicine among them. And what does this mean but that the medical schools want better men, and that the colleges are going to furnish them? In addition to this, another important indication in the same direction, which Dr. Langmaid has just alluded to is the establishment for the first time of a section of Medical Pedagogics in connection with the Pan-American Medical

Congress. I hailed with great delight another similar indication in the programme of the American Surgical Association last month in Washington, on seeing that one of the leading papers by the distinguished gentleman who will address you later, our friend Dr. Billings, of Washington, D. C., was entitled "Methods of Teaching Surgery." It developed what to my mind was one of the most fruitful, and to me personally one of the most useful, debates that was ever held in that body.

Dr. Billings considered in that address three points,-who were to be taught, what was to be taught, and how it was to be taught. The very scope of his paper, perhaps, prevented consideration of what is, I think, of as much importance as the methods of teaching; namely, the men who teach. I would like much to see delivered before all of the boards of trustees of our medical schools in this country (and I think the faculties might benefit quite as much) a course of lectures on "How to Conduct a Medical School, and Who Ought to be Made Professors in it." Trustees should not select men because they are their friends, nor because they are their family physicians, nor because they are related to them in any way; but there should be one sole requisite for the position of a teacher-that he should be the best and most capable man to teach.

Moreover, I should be very sorry indeed to see the day when the practitioner and the professor are to be divorced. I do not know anything that is more enlivening, that renders a man's lectures more juicy, more meaty, than to have the varied experiences, the successes, the failures, the perplexities, and the responsibilities of an active practice. These very men on the benches before him are the men who are to follow him and his colleagues in the actual practice of the profession; and what they want is, not only science, but the applications of science to everyday practice. I care not what the department is, be it chemistry, be it anatomy, be it pathological anatomy, be it any of even the purely scientific

departments (except possibly physiology), if a man wants to teach it in a live way, in a way that will make the knowledge stick, in a way that will make it interesting and attractive instead of a dry statement of facts, he must make the application of almost every fact in his scientific teaching to practice, he must show their practical bearings by cases drawn from his own practice. Along with that, however, I believe that the time will come when the men who are professors in our schools and at the same time practitioners will largely change their methods of practice. A man who is engrossed in a very large private practice often finds it difficult to give that amount of time which the newer education and the newer methods of instruction of classes in small sections require; and I believe that in the future the professors in our medical schools will be more and more restricted in their practice until, eventually, they will practise in the hospital, give their lectures, and do little or no outside practice. This will require, of course, very much larger salaries than now can be given, where the income of the school is derived from fees; and, in order to do this, it is requisite to have large endowments of the medical schools.

You all know the great need, the crying need, of our medical schools at the present day is larger and more thorough laboratory facilities; and that means immense sums of money. I do not know anything more striking than the figures given by Professor Welch in a recent address, in which, collecting all the statistics from the medical schools for 1893, he showed that independently of buildings, I believe, the permanent investments yielding revenues to medical schools in this country were but little over $600,000, and the endowments yielding revenues to theological schools were $17,600,000. I believe thoroughly in taking care of the souls of the community; but I put it to you, and through you to the community, gentlemen, whether there is not a vast disproportion in the discharge of a duty that the public owes to medical