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568 MODERN TIMES.
value to them in advancing their professional education.
Unless they are extraordinarily gifted they are apt to
suffer shipwreck on these rocks, and never to finish their
studies at all.
It can easily be understood that crowded lecture rooms
and clinics are not conducive to the study of medicine;
for here it is important to see well, and closely to observe,
every object and every patient and to follow the
course of every experiment intelligently. With a view
to remedy the inconvenience resulting from the fact that
the space at disposal is insufficient for the number of
students, it has been suggested to limit their number* but
the difficulty of fixing upon any proper or suitable limit to
the number of students to be admitted and still more the
natural dislike to anything like a forcible suppression of
the popularity of the University of Vienna have not failed
to deter the authorities from trying such an experiment.
The medical faculty of Vienna must not be measured by
a scale adapted for a provincial university. Its history, its
arrangements and its abundant supply of material for teaching
have created for it a world-wide reputation. It forms
one of the few centres which attract representatives of the
various peoples of the monarchy, and by its geographical
position it seems designed to be the means of transmitting
to the East the scientific medicine of Europe, a task of
high import in the history of civilization. The degradation
of the medical school of Vienna would be a crime against
the State, against science, and against humanity.
If there is a want of the necessary space for teaching, it
must be supplied by extending the present premises or by
erecting new buildings. Preventive measures may also be
necessary to keep unsuitable persons away from the
university lest the good corn be choked by weeds. These
ends might be secured by raising the lecture fees, which
are smaller in Austria than in any other country,—not with
a view of increasing the incomes of the professors, but
* TH. BILLROTH: Aphorismen, Wien 1886.