as being the easiest, was to study the nature of the works of the human watch, and the next thing was to study the way the parts worked together, and the way the watch worked.  Thus, by degrees, we have had growing up our body of anatomists, or knowers of the construction of the human watch, and our physiologists, who know how the machine works.  And just as any sensible man, who has a valuable watch, does not meddle with it himself, but goes to some one who has studied watchmaking, and understands what the effect of doing this or that may be; so, I suppose, the man who, having charge of that valuable machine, his own body, wants to have it kept in good order, comes to a professor of the medical art for the purpose of having it set right, believing that, by deduction from the facts of structure and from the facts of function, the physician will divine what may be the matter with his bodily watch at that particular time, and what may be the best means of setting it right.  If that may be taken as a just representation of the relation of the theoretical branches of medicine—­what we may call the institutes of medicine, to use an old term—­to the practical branches, I think it will be obvious to you that they are of prime and fundamental importance.  Whatever tends to affect the teaching of them injuriously must tend to destroy and to disorganize the whole fabric of the medical art.  I think every sensible man has seen this long ago; but the difficulties in the way of attaining good teaching in the different branches of the theory, or institutes, of medicine are very serious.  It is a comparatively easy matter—­pray mark that I use the word “comparatively”—­it is a comparatively easy matter to learn anatomy and to teach it; it is a very difficult matter to learn physiology and to teach it.  It is a very difficult matter to know and to teach those branches of physics and those branches of chemistry which bear directly upon physiology; and hence it is that, as a matter of fact, the teaching of physiology, and the teaching of the physics and the chemistry which bear upon it, must necessarily be in a state of relative imperfection; and there is nothing to be grumbled at in the fact that this relative imperfection exists.  But is the relative imperfection which exists only such as is necessary, or is it made worse by our practical arrangements?  I believe—­and if I did not so believe I should not have troubled you with these observations—­I believe it is made infinitely worse by our practical arrangements, or rather, I ought to say, our very unpractical arrangements.  Some very wise man long ago affirmed that every question, in the long run, was a question of finance; and there is a good deal to be said for that view.  Most assuredly the question of medical teaching is, in a very large and broad sense, a question of finance.  What I mean is this:  that in London the arrangements of the medical schools, and the number of them, are such as to render it almost impossible that men who