And it is for this reason, also, that I condemn the method of judging of the ability or competence of any student simply from questions and answers. So much knowledge can be acquired by storing the memory with all sorts of details, without making one’s self fit to digest what is learned and to assimilate even a part of it. But how necessary is this latter when one is called upon to help all sorts of conditions in people who seek advice for physical, mental or moral ailments. And a physician, in the full sense of the word, must be qualified to help human nature from these three points of view. The mere studying and learning by heart of the symptoms of diseases, and of the origin, preparation and doses of drugs, ought to be the last chapter to be examined upon. My private studies in which examinations would have given much more satisfactory results, were “biology,” “cellular anatomy” and “comparative anatomy,” in none of which subjects had we any instruction in the college. And it is my opinion that the medical profession will not, and cannot, make medicine a science as long as these branches (in both their physiological and pathological forms) are not studied profoundly and made a foundation upon which to build methods for averting or controlling disease. So long as physicians are taught to talk of “curing disease,” so long will the whole profession wander in the realm of empiricism, if not outright quackery. It may be excusable that I thus use myself in illustrating what I think is so pernicious, namely, cramming the memory with learning isolated facts and filling the brain to its fullest capacity with the names of authors and their opinions, leaving no room for individual reasoning or research or for the power of making original deductions and applications. After this apparent digression, I must return to my theme, namely, the last few weeks of my student life in Cleveland. As I have already stated how distrustful the so-called “good society” was concerning female medical students and how ready the so-called “reformers” were to seek them, I must here mention a peculiar aberration which had taken hold of the whole community. I refer to what was then called Mesmerism. The individual thinking and theorizing on this subject assumed with many persons a perfectly preposterous form. The views held were based on no scientific research or study but simply on memorizing what was published (often after the most superficial observation) regarding hysterical or somnambulistic manifestations.