These qualities form the foundation of sound judgment and skilful medical practice. It is not a brilliant theorizer that the sick person requires, but the experience gained by careful observation and sound common-sense, united to the kindly feeling and cheerfulness which make the very sight of the doctor a cordial to the sick. If these necessary results of intellectual training can be secured in harmony with the moral structure of womanhood, then a step of real social progress is made by our study of medicine. This necessity for making the most painstaking observation of facts, the foundation to be laid by the student in every branch of her studies, is well illustrated in the life of Darwin, who writes thus to a friend: ‘I have been hard at work for the last month in dissecting a little animal about the size of a pin’s head, from the Chronos Archipelago, and I could spend another month and daily see more beautiful structure.’ Of the value of this method of persistent labour, his friend gives this noteworthy testimony: ‘Your sagacious father never did a wiser thing than devote himself to these years of patient toil. It is a remarkable instance of his scientific insight and courage that he saw the necessity of proper training and did not shrink from the labour of acquiring it.’ In medicine, anatomy, physiology and chemistry are the primary studies where that foundation of conscientious exactitude must be laid on which the skill of the future physician so largely depends. The first and indispensable basis of medicine is anatomy, with which physiology is inseparably blended; for human physiology can only be properly studied in connection with the human structure, whose condition in health and disease forms the direct object of our profession. No student should be satisfied until she has most carefully followed out the structure of every region of that human body with whose life we shall have to deal. Careful anatomical study is the sure and indispensable preparation for that next advanced range of clinical observation, where pathology and therapeutics bring us into the direct study of the sick. The more thoroughly the human organization is investigated, the more wonderful will the unapproachable mechanism for the use of human life be seen to be. We shall never regret any amount of time and care spent in acquiring the most intimate knowledge of human anatomy. For even if we never perform a surgical operation, the thorough knowledge of the human framework with whose aberrations we have to deal, gives a firm foundation for practice that nothing else can supply.