On a medical
certificate, a man may be taken from his home and from his business and
confined in a lunatic asylum; surely, therefore, it is desirable that
the medical practitioner should have some rational and clear conceptions
as to the nature and symptoms of mental disease. Bearing in mind all
these requirements of medical education, you will admit that the burden
on the young aspirant for the medical profession is somewhat of the
heaviest, and that it needs some care to prevent his intellectual back
from being broken.
Those who are acquainted with the existing systems of medical education
will observe that, long as is the catalogue of studies which I have
enumerated, I have omitted to mention several that enter into the usual
medical curriculum of the present day. I have said not a word about
zoology, comparative anatomy, botany, or materia medica. Assuredly this
is from no light estimate of the value or importance of such studies in
themselves. It may be taken for granted that I should be the last person
in the world to object to the teaching of zoology, or comparative
anatomy, in themselves; but I have the strongest feeling that,
considering the number and the gravity of those studies through which a
medical man must pass, if he is to be competent to discharge the serious
duties which devolve upon him, subjects which lie so remote as these do
from his practical pursuits should be rigorously excluded.
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