a question about the circulation of the blood, that Professor Breitkopf is of opinion that it circulates, but that the whole thing is an open question.  I assure you that I am hardly exaggerating the state of mind on matters of fundamental importance which I have found over and over again to obtain, among gentlemen coming up to that picked examination of the University of London.  Now, I do not think that is a desirable state of things.  I cannot understand why physiology should not be taught—­in fact, you have here abundant evidence that it can be taught—­with the same definiteness and the same precision as anatomy is taught.  And you may depend upon this, that the only physiology which is to be of any good whatever in medical practice, or in its application to the study of medicine, is that physiology which a man knows of his own knowledge; just as the only anatomy which would be of any good to the surgeon is the anatomy which he knows of his own knowledge.  Another peculiarity I have found in the physiology which has been current, and that is, that in the minds of a great many gentlemen it has been supplanted by histology.  They have learnt a great deal of histology, and they have fancied that histology and physiology are the same things.  I have asked for some knowledge of the physics and the mechanics and the chemistry of the human body, and I have been met by talk about cells.  I declare to you I believe it will take me two years, at least, of absolute rest from the business of an examiner to hear the word “cell,” “germinal matter,” or “carmine,” without a sort of inward shudder.

Well, now, gentlemen, I am sure my colleagues in this examination will bear me out in saying that I have not been exaggerating the evils and defects which are current—­have been current—­in a large quantity of the physiological teaching, the results of which come before examiners.  And it becomes a very interesting question to know how all this comes about, and in what way it can be remedied.  How it comes about will be perfectly obvious to any one who has considered the growth of medicine.  I suppose that medicine and surgery first began by some savage, more intelligent than the rest, discovering that a certain herb was good for a certain pain, and that a certain pull, somehow or other, set a dislocated joint right.  I suppose all things had their humble beginnings, and medicine and surgery were in the same condition.  People who wear watches know nothing about watchmaking.  A watch goes wrong and it stops; you see the owner giving it a shake, or, if he is very bold, he opens the case, and gives the balance-wheel a turn.  Gentlemen, that is empirical practice, and you know what are the results upon the watch.  I should think you can divine what are the results of analogous operations upon the human body.  And because men of sense very soon found that such were the effects of meddling with very complicated machinery they did not understand, I suppose the first thing,