[274] The usual course is to take the special medical examinations with the First Part of the natural sciences tripos. Sometimes however these are taken in addition to the ordinary _B.A._ degree. The last of the three _M.B._ examinations is divided into two parts, of which Part I. is taken at the end of the fourth year of medical study, and Part II. after six years, three of which must have been spent in medical and surgical practice and hospital work. The keeping of the “act” is not intended to be a mere form, and students are advised to prepare for it during the years of their hospital practice. [275] The degrees of bachelor of surgery (a registrable qualification) and master of surgery require no separate examination; the candidate must have done all that is required of a bachelor of medicine; but bachelors of surgery who are not also masters of arts cannot incept until three years have passed since they took the _B.C._, and masters of arts must have become legally qualified surgeons. [276] Whitgift’s thesis for the _D.D._ degree (1570) was “_Papa est ille anti-Christus_“--‘the pope is himself anti-Christ.’ [277] _Erasm. Epist._ (London 1642), _Liber secundus, Epist. 10_. Letter to Bullock dated from the Palace at Rochester, August 31, 1516. [278] Or were relegated to the previous examinations. [279] Till then it had meant Aristotle: the statutes of Queens’ and Christ’s, framed within 50 years of one another, provide for its teaching--“the natural, moral, and _metaphysical_ philosophy of Aristotle”; and even in Fuller’s time these metaphysics were the study of the bachelor of arts: “Let a _sophister_ begin with his axioms, a _batchelor of art_ proceed to his _metaphysicks_, a _master_ to his _mathematicks_, and a _divine_ conclude with his _controversies_ and _comments_ on scripture....” Philosophy, meaning Aristotle, had come in to disturb the peace and the sufficiency of the old ‘seven arts.’ [280] William Everett, _M.A._, 1865. [281] It has been said that senior wranglers are hidden in country rectories and are never heard of again. In a hundred and sixty years (1747-1906) there have been eight senior wranglers who could be placed in the first rank as mathematicians and physicists: Herschell 1813 Airy 1823 Stokes 1841 Cayley 1842 Adams 1843 Todhunter 1848 Routh 1854 Rayleigh 1865 Paley, in 1763, was the first distinguished senior wrangler. On the other hand Colenso Whewell and Lord Kelvin were second wranglers, so was the geometrician Sylvester; de Morgan and Pritchard were fourth wranglers; the learned Porteous was tenth wrangler, Lord Manners (Lord Chancellor of Ireland) was 5th, Lord Ellenborough (Lord Chief Justice) 3rd, Lord Lyndhurst (Lord Chancellor) second.