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subjects that must be studied by the medical student, and glance through them sufficiently to see the multiplicity and variety of the knowledge contained in these books, and he will have no doubt whatever that to master these subjects in any sense must require the best five years of any life. He will find that a minimum of 10,000 octavo pages of close print must be read, marked, and digested. If he then tries to imagine that every one of those great volumes only contains the theory and the word-description, while the practice and the real knowledge of its subject must be obtained in the dissecting room, the laboratory, the hospital, the dispensary, the sick room of the poor, and the asylum, he will be verily appalled by the task before every young man and woman beginning the study of medicine. There is not one of those subjects but takes the whole undivided time of many experts of great mental energy to cultivate it. Anatomy, which deals with the form and relations of all the organs and structures of the body, from the largest to those that need a microscope of high power to see; physiology, the science of normal life and function, and pathology, the science of abnormal life, structure and function, are the three great basal sciences on which the doctor's whole superstructure of professional knowledge and practice must rest. The knowledge in regard to the two last, physiology and pathology, are in a continual state of advance and flux, so that the text books of ten years ago are antiquated to-day. The proper study of these implies a mind eager to question, and, if possible, to penetrate the occult secrets of life that have fascinated and puzzled the greatest minds among mankind in all civilized ages. Surgery and medicine, the technical parts of his course, are different and wide domains of knowledge, yet the student has to know them, or he can be of no service at all. All the 'ills that flesh is heir to' are there depicted, so that in the hospital and by the bed-side they may be diagnosed and treated. Knowledge and modes of treatment, and technique too, are ever advancing and changing, and his teachers, year by year, must advance. Most surgical operations are very different procedures now from what they were twenty years ago. Midwifery, and the diseases peculiar to women and children, must be studied carefully, for they form a

large part of every medical man's practice. The 'specialties,' diseases of the eye, the ear, the throat, the mind and fevers, all claim some attention, and all are pushing their importance on him. Let any man go with a doctor in busy general practice, for a week, and see what he has to do each day, and the problems he has to solve, and we venture to say that he will be amazed at the extent of the practical skill and scientific knowledge called into exercise, and will be surprised that even in a five years course of instruction he could have acquired it all. He has daily to see from 20 to 40 patients, almost all suffering from different complaints; his advice is asked about a dozen questions in each case, each needing wisdom as well as knowledge. His memory crammed with secrets which he must not in honour divulge. To say that he must be a man of high moral tone is a truism. He must, in addition to common morality, have that delicacy of mind and that healthiness of moral constitution to which pruriency and smallness are absolutely unknown. His very presence should abash certain evil modes of looking at things. His whole life should be a public and private example.

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If any one will take a good Annual Report of an ordinary Medical Officer of Health of a County, and peruse it carefully, he will see what a medical education means in that direction. The topography of the County, the climate, the rainfall, the occupation of the inhabitants, the diseases they are subject to, and that they die of; the kind of houses they live in; the epidemics that have been prevalent, with the modes of isolating and arresting their progress, are all treated of. Such documents freely circulated and read are one of the very best popular sources of education in health and sanitation. The Reports of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, and the Reports of the Registrar General, are documents of supreme importance to the community. They are often marvels of industry, of patient searching out of causes of disease, and of profound scientific reasoning. They all depend on the knowledge modern medicine has given us, and are all written for the good of the public. They often treat of the effect of environment on health in a way that is most instructive to legislators. The mere enumeration of the different death-rates among the various trades and professions,

with a medical commentary on the causes of the great differences that are found to exist, touches questions that affect every man who has his living to earn, and some of the people who are so unfortunate as to be idle. Some of the Blue Books, such as the Report of the Board of Supervision and the Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, are full of medical facts, needing interpretation to the public for their information and guidance. In all these documents, and their value to the nation, medical education plays a part.

In any account of the medical schools of Scotland, that of Edinburgh must stand out above all the others, overshadowing them by her marvellous success, and having influenced them all by her example and through having sent to them men imbued by her spirit and trained in her class rooms to be their most successful teachers. Her spirit has gradually pervaded the other schools, so that in their modern history they all may be truly said to be her children. With her 2,000 medical students, drawn from every quarter of the world, only about 45 per cent. of them being Scottish, her yearly output of 450 medical graduates and licentiates, her list of illustrious medical teachers, investigators and authors, and her position as the second or third medical school in the world in number of students, the gray metropolis of the North may well be proud of what she has achieved in the past and is now doing for medicine, and through it, for humanity. Edinburgh had no special advantages for developing a great medical school, such as the endowed hospitals of London gave the metropolis. She gradually, almost tentatively, produced a system of teaching largely her own, and she has always had an abundance of earnest and enthusiastic men to devote their lives and best energies to teaching, and to hand on the torch from one generation to another. Medical teaching in Edinburgh did not begin in the University, and has never been confined to the University, yet for a century and a half the University has been its centre. The Colleges of Surgeons and Physicians both began the teaching of Anatomy, Surgery, and Medicine before any Medical Faculty existed in the University, or any real medical teaching existed there. Eight of the Medical Chairs were instituted at the instance of the Royal Colleges. The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh,

which has been the great clinical centre of instruction, without which there never could have been an Edinburgh Medical School, was founded by the College of Physicians, Lord Provost Drummond, and the first Monro, in 1736. No doubt there were Professors of Medicine in 1685, but no practical teaching was done in the University till the first Monro was made Professor of Anatomy and Surgery in 1720. It was a happy combination of five institutions in Edinburgh that created its Medical School. The Colleges of Surgeons and Physicians, the Infirmary, the University, and the Town Council, by their commen efforts, by their rivalries, by their combinations and by their competitions have unquestionably done so, so far as institutions. apart from men can be said to create anything. And, as we shall see, the absence of any single guiding and regulating authority gave a spirit of freedom and of spontaneity that has really been one great source of its life. The struggle for existence in nature has been repeated in Edinburgh with happy effect to its medical teaching. The strong have lived and established themselves, while the weak have gone to the wall; and there have always been successive crops of vigorous youth to strive for mastery over each other, and to take the place of the old. In Anatomy, the foundation of medical study, a series of men of extraordinary ability and fitness have followed each other in the University and outside its walls. The story of the two first Monros, as told by Dr. Struthers in his Edinburgh Anatomical School, is a very remarkable one. Of a good Scotch family, John Monro, a man of high professional and social position, a surgeon in Edinburgh, trained his son, Alexander Monro, from his boyhood for the Anatomy Chair. He was sent to London and Paris, and Leyden, and on his return was elected by the Town Council to the Chair of Anatomy when 22 years of age. The Town Council had, in the dark age of Scotland, in 1505, made provision for the dissection of the human body-a wonderful example of farseeing wisdom. The first Monro had a most distinguished career as a teacher, a practitioner in the city, an author and an original investigator. He trained his youngest son, Alexander, Monro Secundus,' to follow in his footsteps. He became as great a teacher and author as his father. The father began with

57 students; the son ended with 400. So great had the fame of Edinburgh as a teaching school of medicine become by the end of last century.

Goodsir, a man of real genius, caught up the new ideas of the German anatomists, and of Owen, and extended their scope. He was not content to describe what could be seen by the naked eye, but used the microscope as a part of his ordinary class instruction, and did not confine his investigation to structure only, but was always asking what form and structure meant when in vital action. He was thus one of the founders of Modern Physiology. Then came Turner, when still more thorough and systematic teaching was needed; when, through the enormous increase of the number of students, a new department was required for the subject, with a new and more thorough organisation and administration. This remarkable succession of teachers within the University was not the only source of instruction in the subject in Edinburgh. The Colleges of Surgeons and Physicians originally established teachers in various subjects, but in time other men wished to teach and were encouraged to do so. So that there sprang up outside of the University, teachers in this and all other medical subjects. In 1855, on Professor Syme's initiative, and after a severe fight, these lectures were accepted by the University as being of equal value to the teaching of the professors, to the extent of four classes out of the whole curriculum. This was called at first The Extra Mural,' or 'Extra Academical School,' and now 'The Edinburgh School of Medicine.' Any man who satisfies the Colleges that he can lecture, and has the means of proper teaching is allowed to do so. As many as like can lecture on the same subject. If the professor gets old, or lazy, or inefficient, the students can go, and do go, to the extra mural teacher. A healthy rivalry and stimulus were thus established. There are often three or four teachers of Anatomy, and five or six teachers of Surgery and Medicine. The system allows any man to try his power. If he succeeds he gets students and an income, and has a good chance for the professorship when it becomes vacant. That, indeed, is commonly his goal. If a professorship of his subject falls vacant in another Scotch or Irish University, or great English School, he has

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