dvanced
years hangs upon this wall, long the honored Professor of Theory and
Practice in this Institution, of whom I shall say something in this
Lecture. Our venerated Teacher studied assiduously afterwards in the
great London Hospitals, but I think he used to quote his "old Master"
ten times where he quoted Mr. Cline or Dr. Woodville once.

When I compare this direct transfer of the practical experience of a
wise man into the mind of a student,--every fact one that he can use
in the battle of life and death,--with the far off, unserviceable
"scientific" truths that I and some others are in the habit of teaching,
I cannot help asking myself whether, if we concede that our forefathers
taught too little, there is not--a possibility that we may sometimes
attempt to teach too much. I almost blush when I think of myself as
describing the eight several facets on two slender processes of the
palate bone, or the seven little twigs that branch off from the minute
tympanic nerve, and I wonder whether my excellent colleague feels in the
same way when he pictures himself as giving the constitution of
neurin, which as he and I know very well is that of the hydrate of
trimethyle-oxethyle-ammonium, or the formula for the production of
alloxan, which, though none but the Professors and older students can
be expected to remember it, is C10 H4 N4 O6+ 2HO, NO5=C8 H4 N2
O10+2CO2+N2+NH4 O, NO5.

I can bear the voice of some rough iconoclast addressing the Anatomist
and the Chemist in tones of contemptuous indignation: "What is this
stuff with which you are cramming the brains of young men who are to
hold the lives of the community in their hands? Here is a man fallen in
a fit; you can tell me all about the eight surfaces of the two processes
of the palate bone, but you have not had the sense to loosen that man's
neck-cloth, and the old women are all calling you a fool? Here is a
fellow that has just swallowed poison. I want something to turn his
stomach inside out at the shortest notice. Oh, you have forgotten the
dose of the sulphate of zinc, but you remember the formula for the
production of alloxan!"

"Look you, Master Doctor,--if I go to a carpenter to come and stop
a leak in my roof that is flooding the house, do you suppose I care
whether he is a botanist or not? Cannot a man work in wood without
knowing all about endogens and exogens, or must he attend Professor
Gray's Lectures before he can be trusted to make a box-trap? If my ho