Note 3 — IV.

Mr. Quain's words (Medical Times and Gazette, February 20) are:—"A few words as to our special Medical course of instruction and the influence upon it of such changes in the elementary schools as I have mentioned. The student now enters at once upon several sciences—physics, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, botany, pharmacy, therapeutics—all these, the facts and the language and the laws of each, to be mastered in eighteen months. Up to the beginning of the Medical course many have learned little. We cannot claim anything better than the Examiner of the University of London and the Cambridge Lecturer have reported for their Universities. Supposing that at school young people had acquired some exact elementary knowledge in physics, chemistry, and a branch of natural history—say botany—with the physiology connected with it, they would then have gained necessary knowledge, with some practice in inductive reasoning. The whole studies are processes of observation and induction—the best discipline of the mind for the purposes of life—for our purposes not less than any. 'By such study (says Dr. Whewell) of one or more departments of inductive science the mind may escape from the thraldom of mere words.' By that plan the burden of the early Medical course would be much lightened, and more time devoted to practical studies, including Sir Thomas Watson's 'final and supreme stage' of the knowledge of Medicine."