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MEDICAL TEACHING AT THE PRESENT TIME. 495
as that of curing them, and public medicine and private
medicine occupy equally honourable positions. The governments,
in organizing sanitary administration, in appointing
boards of health, and in providing for medical supervision
in certain cases, bear testimony to their recognition of
the truth of this fact and of its continually increasing
significance, and the prophecy of Mr. GLADSTONE that the
doctors are to be the leaders of the people is approaching
its fulfilment.*
MEDICAL TEACHING AT THE PRESENT TIME.
THE changes and improvements in medical teaching during
the last hundred years are not less important than the ,.
results which have been achieved in the prosecution of' the "
study of medical science. When we contemplate the institutions
and medical schools of our own time richly provided
as they are with every kind of appliance to facilitate
teaching, with departments excellently arranged for the
study of normal and pathological anatomy and physiology,
and provided with the necessary apparatus and instruments ;
their laboratories for physics, chemistry and hygiene ; their
well stocked museums and numerous departments for
clinical teaching ; when we look at all these and draw a
comparison with the inadequate beginnings which were
made in.; such things in the last century we recognize at
once,how much has been done since then.
At* the present time the above arrangements are
* Wishing to get a corroboration of this rather sweeping prediction at first
hand, I ventured to trouble Mr. GLADSTONE with a letter asking him if he could
confirm it. I quoted to him the above passage as it stands in the German text.
Mr. GLADSTONE honoured me with a reply as follows :—" So far as regards the "
" exact words cited in your letter I cannot positively say Aye or No, and I"
'rather think that I should in using them have added some qualifying or "
" limiting expressions. But it is certainly the fact that, for a very long time "
:< I have believed the medical profession to be in a state both of absolute"
"advance from the progress of its science—this it may be said is,mere"
;< commonplace—and of relative advance from the particular features attaching "
'to our civilization in its onward movement."—E. H. H.