We must stop
somewhere, and for my own part I think the scholastic exercises of our
colleges have already claimed their full share of the student's time
without our seeking to extend them.
I trust I have vindicated the apparent inconsequence of teaching young
students a good deal that seems at first sight profitless, but which
helps them to learn and retain what is profitable. But this is an
inquisitive age, and if we insist on piling up beyond a certain height
knowledge which is in itself mere trash and lumber to a man whose life is
to be one long fight with death and disease, there will be some sharp
questions asked by and by, and our quick-witted people will perhaps find
they can get along as well without the professor's cap as without the
bishop's mitre and the monarch's crown.
I myself have nothing to do with clinical teaching. Yet I do not
hesitate to say it is more essential than all the rest put together, so
far as the ordinary practice of medicine is concerned; and this is by far
the most important thing to be learned, because it deals with so many
more lives than any other branch of the profession. So of personal
instruction, such as we give and others give in the interval of lectures,
much of it at the bedside, some of it in the laboratory, some in the
microscope-room, some in the recitation-room, I think it has many
advantages of its own over the winter course, and I do not wish to see it
shortened for the sake of prolonging what seems to me long enough
already.
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