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each has its place and power, and it is impolitic to adopt one exclusively. While the old-fashioned essayreading will never please pupils, who know the books in which they can more readily get up the matter or even the words of such addresses, no method of learning can be more useful or agreeable than the impressive discourse of one thoroughly accustomed to teaching, and who, an entire master of his subject, can yet render his meaning intelligible to the least-informed of his audience. The courses on each subject should be progressive, and as this would double the lecturer's labour, there is a strong argument for amalgamation of schools to make lectureships fairly remunerative. He can call to aid diagrams, models, experiments, microscopic and other preparations to illustrate his teachings; but too many diagrams or specimens are confusing. Paris lecturers seldom use plates or drawings. By critically examining the authorities of his subject and contemporary literature, an amount of erudition as well as practical experience otherwise unattainable can be offered to the student. The good practice of note-taking, in a brief and accurate though digested form, has been lately said to give only an inconvenient edition of some treatise on the subject; but it is the practice of writing and condensing, not the facts, which usefully exercises the mind. These lecture-room or hospital notes should be revised and expanded each evening, or they, are of little use. Students should be taught practically by the lecturers on physiology, chemistry, or pharmacy, for looking at a carefully prepared microscopic slide, a carefully tested experiment, or elegant mixture is not one-fourth as instructive as the efforts to do these things for himself would be to a student. Dr. Johnson used to say he could see no use in lectures unless there was something to be demonstrated-even lectures on the making of shoes-but all medical subjects can be taught in the practical manner.

The want of clearness under which

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Hunter certainly laboured as a lecturer, and the want of ability to appreciate him among his contemporaries, may have caused that otherwise inexplicable fact, that the audience of that greatest of physiologists and pathologists never numbered twenty. The evidence of a great Oxford professor on the power of lectures, although applied to another class of subjects, may not be inappropriate here: "The type is a poor substitute for the human voice. It has no means of arousing, moderating, or adjusting the attention. It has no emphasis but italics, and this meagre notation cannot adjust itself to the need of the occasion; it cannot in this way mark the heed which should be specially and chiefly given to peculiar passages or words. It has no variety of manner or intonation to show by their changes how the words are to be accepted, or what comparative importance is to be attached to them. It has no natural music to take the ear like the human voice-it carries with it no human eye to range, and to rivet the student when on the verge of truancy, and to command his intellectual activity by an appeal to the courtesies of life. Half the symbolism of a living language is thus lost when committed to paper, and that symbolism is the very means by which the forces of the hearer's mind can be best economised or most pleasantly excited. The lecture, on the other hand, as delivered possesses all those instruments to win and hold and to harmonise the attention, and, above all, it imparts to the whole teaching a human character which the printed book can never do. The professor is the science or subject vitalized or humanized in the student's presence. He sees him kindle in his subject-he sees reflected and exhibited in him, his manner, his earnestness, the general power of the science to engage, to delight, and absorb a human intelligence. His natural sympathy and admiration attract or impel his tastes, or feelings, or wishes for the moment into the same current of feeling,

and his mind is naturally, and rapidly, and insensibly strung and attuned to the strain of truth which is offered to him."

Let me cite two more instances of brilliant teachers of our science. Hear Arnott on Sir C. Bell: "Still more eminent was he as a teacher of anatomy. In the lecture-room he was almost without a rival; his views were nearly always solid and always ingenious, while his manner and language enchained the attention of his audience. Dull, indeed, must have been the student who would have slumbered while Charles Bell was in the professorial chair. In his hands dry bones lived again, imagination investing them with the textures which had once clothed them. A muscle was no longer a mere bundle of fibres arising here, inserted there; it was a guide to some important operation for the surgeon's knife, or kindling with hidden fire betrayed by the anatomy of its expression the emotions that lurked within; and the flaccid artery on the table spouted forth its crimson stream, and demanded the arresting hand of the skilful surgeon, or threatened death as the alternative. In short Sir C. Bell made his pupils think, and interesting as anatomy is as a branch of natural history, he taught them to value it most of all as a guide to the healing art." Of the great Wm. Hunter, Brodie speaks: "He is reported to have been at once simple and profound; minute in his anatomical demonstrations, yet the very reverse of dry and tedious. Subjects which were uninteresting in themselves, were rendered interesting by the liveliness of his descriptions, and the more important points were illustrated by the relation of cases and the introduction of appropriate anecdotes, which, while they relieved the painful effort of attention, served to impress his lessons on the mind in such a manner that they could never be effaced. The tendency of his lectures must have been to improve his pupils with respect to their moral qualities, fully as much as with respect to

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their professional attainments." Lectures since the days of Harvey and Lower, who had royal hearers, have done much to elevate our science in public estimation.

Sufficient supervision of lecturers is not made by licensing bodies, as incapable instructors are a great evil and tend to cast this admirable method of education into disrepute. It is certainly carrying the free-trade principle, advocated in medicine in the famous letter of Adam Smith to Cullen, too far to allow every one to teach. It is scarcely one in a hundred of those fully informed who have that aptitude and perspicuity of expression, that versatility of manner and industry in procuring illustrations which successful teaching requires. The teacher must not only pour out knowledge, but he must pour it into his pupils. Too great rapidity overstrains the attention, and subsequent fatigue renders learning impossible.

The late Professor Macartney was in favour of licensing lecturers only after they had given three year's notice of their intention, and could prove their capability at a kind of concursus. When a professorship is vacant it would be desirable that candidates should send in a syllabus specifying in detail each day's lecture and the means he possessed for its illustration, and the governing body should see that the successful one adhered to it. Such is far more trustworthy than a book of testimonials. The annual publication of the corrected syllabus would be useful to the students, especially if they distinguished the "pass," or more essential, from the "honor" subjects. A synopsis on the black board of each day's business has been also found useful-if pupils will not copy it before lecture, and depart rejoicing that they have gained an hour, or rather forty-five minutes, for to such a duration the academical hour has been by common consent reduced. The lecturer should spend a few minutes at the beginning of each lecture in examining his pupils on the topics he dwelt on the previous day, as

attention is increased, the reading of the subject encouraged, and the new matter is suitably introduced. A weekly examination is not nearly so useful and is not largely attended. A recapitulation by the lecturer is often tiresome, especially if it be a pet subject of his. The examination at once on the conclusion of the lecture would leave no time for the reflection or study of the pupils, who often make most pertinent and novel observations. The precedence of the radial pulse over the heart's second sound was first noted by Mr. Colt, a pupil conversing with Mr. Paget after he had lectured on the subject.

Such examinations and conversation in the chemical or physiological laboratory are very useful in preserving an intimacy between professor and pupil, which has heretofore been sadly wanting in medical teaching. A useful way of ascertaining the presence in the city of all the pupils (for such is often doubtful), and of forcing them to learn, would be to hold compulsory monthly examinations, and a candidate who failed in a majority of them should be refused a certificate.

ANATOMY.

The

I shall now dwell more in detail on the various branches of knowledge which must occupy the student's attention. Of all the subjects taught in medical schools, anatomy has been usually counted the most important. The practice of medicine and surgery require constant reference to the normal state of the human body. operator would plunge his knife into situations where vital parts abound, with a certainty of accomplishing his patient's destruction, were he not a practised anatomist, and the physician would seek in vain to discover the seat of ailments were he not perfectly acquainted with the normal position, sounds, motions, or other phenomena which distinguish the organs; or, as Dr. Hope quaintly expresses it, "a physician looking at his

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