confine themselves to the teaching of the theoretical branches of the profession should be able to make their bread by that operation; and, you know, if a man cannot make his bread, he cannot teach—­at least his teaching comes to a speedy end.  That is a matter of physiology.  Anatomy is fairly well taught, because it lies in the direction of practice, and a man is all the better surgeon for being a good anatomist.  It does not absolutely interfere with the pursuits of a practical surgeon if he should hold a Chair of Anatomy—­though I do not for one moment say that he would not be a better teacher if he did not devote himself to practice. (Applause.) Yes, I know exactly what that cheer means, but I am keeping as carefully as possible from any sort of allusion to Professor Ellis.  But the fact is, that even human anatomy has now grown to be so large a matter, that it takes the whole devotion of a man’s life to put the great mass of knowledge upon that subject into such a shape that it can be teachable to the mind of the ordinary student.  What the student wants in a professor is a man who shall stand between him and the infinite diversity and variety of human knowledge, and who shall gather all that together, and extract from it that which is capable of being assimilated by the mind.  That function is a vast and an important one, and unless, in such subjects as anatomy, a man is wholly free from other cares, it is almost impossible that he can perform it thoroughly and well.  But if it be hardly possible for a man to pursue anatomy without actually breaking with his profession, how is it possible for him to pursue physiology?

I get every year those very elaborate reports of Henle and Meissner—­volumes of, I suppose, 400 pages altogether—­and they consist merely of abstracts of the memoirs and works which have been written on Anatomy and Physiology—­only abstracts of them!  How is a man to keep up his acquaintance with all that is doing in the physiological world—­in a world advancing with enormous strides every day and every hour—­if he has to be distracted with the cares of practice?  You know very well it must be impracticable to do so.  Our men of ability join our medical schools with an eye to the future.  They take the Chairs of Anatomy or of Physiology; and by and by they leave those Chairs for the more profitable pursuits into which they have drifted by professional success, and so they become clothed, and physiology is bare.  The result is, that in those schools in which physiology is thus left to the benevolence, so to speak, of those who have no time to look to it, the effect of such teaching comes out obviously, and is made manifest in what I spoke of just now—­the unreality, the bookishness of the knowledge of the taught.  And if this is the case in physiology, still more must it be the case in those branches of physics which are the foundation of physiology; although it may be less the case in chemistry, because for an able chemist a certain honourable and independent career lies in the direction of his work, and he is able, like the anatomist, to look upon what he may teach to the student as not absolutely taking him away from his bread-winning pursuits.