FOOTNOTE: 

[3] Mr. Quain’s words (Medical Times and Gazette, February 20) are:—­“A few words as to our special Medical course of instruction and the influence upon it of such changes in the elementary schools as I have mentioned.  The student now enters at once upon several sciences—­physics, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, botany, pharmacy, therapeutics—­all these, the facts and the language and the laws of each, to be mastered in eighteen months.  Up to the beginning of the Medical course many have learned little.  We cannot claim anything better than the Examiner of the University of London and the Cambridge Lecturer have reported for their Universities.  Supposing that at school young people had acquired some exact elementary knowledge in physics, chemistry, and a branch of natural history—­say botany—­with the physiology connected with it, they would then have gained necessary knowledge, with some practice in inductive reasoning.  The whole studies are processes of observation and induction—­the best discipline of the mind for the purposes of life—­for our purposes not less than any.  ’By such study (says Dr. Whewell) of one or more departments of inductive science the mind may escape from the thraldom of mere words.’  By that plan the burden of the early Medical course would be much lightened, and more time devoted to practical studies, including Sir Thomas Watson’s ‘final and supreme stage’ of the knowledge of Medicine.”

V.

ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCES.

The subject to which I have to beg your attention during the ensuing hour is “The Relation of Physiological Science to other branches of Knowledge.”

Had circumstances permitted of the delivery, in their strict logical order, of that series of discourses of which the present lecture is a member, I should have preceded my friend and colleague Mr. Henfrey, who addressed you on Monday last; but while, for the sake of that order, I must beg you to suppose that this discussion of the Educational bearings of Biology in general does precede that of Special Zoology and Botany, I am rejoiced to be able to take advantage of the light thus already thrown upon the tendency and methods of Physiological Science.

Regarding Physiological Science, then, in its widest sense—­as the equivalent of Biology—­the Science of Individual Life—­we have to consider in succession: 

1.  Its position and scope as a branch of knowledge.

2.  Its value as a means of mental discipline.

3.  Its worth as practical information.

And lastly,

4.  At what period it may best be made a branch of Education.

Our conclusions on the first of these heads must depend, of course, upon the nature of the subject-matter of Biology; and I think a few preliminary considerations will place before you in a clear light the vast difference which exists between the living bodies with which Physiological science is concerned, and the remainder of the universe;—­between the phaenomena of Number and Space, of Physical and of Chemical force, on the one hand, and those of Life on the other.