Knowing that such were his ideas with regard to the practice of medicine, it is all the more interesting to review the system of teaching that Graves considered most likely to produce genuine practitioners of medicine. Those who have been mainly concerned with the reform of medical education here in America in recent years can scarcely fail to be struck with the appropriateness of Graves' ideas on this subject nearly a century ago. When a very young man he did not hesitate to express his deprecation of the conventional and artificial methods of medical instruction in his own time, and he anticipated what is best in the methods that have gradually come into vogue at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. His views will always remain a suggestive storehouse of thought for those who have the higher medical education at heart. In his introductory lecture at the opening of the Medical course at the Meath Hospital in Dublin in 1821, he declared very definitely what he considered to be the principal aim of the medical student: "Students should aim not at seeing many diseases every day; no, their object should be constantly to study a few cases with diligence and attention; they should anxiously cultivate the habit of making accurate observations. This cannot be done at once; this habit can be only gradually acquired. It is never the result of ability alone; it never fails to reward the labors of patient industry. You should also endeavor to render your observations not only accurate but complete. You should follow when it is possible every case from its commencement to its termination; for the latter often affords the best explanation of previous symptoms and the best commentary on the treatment." {182} Graves was inculcating in principle what Corrigan and himself and Stokes were to exemplify so thoroughly in practice in the next few years. Before the end of the decade in which this address was delivered at the Meath Hospital, Corrigan at the little Jervis Street Hospital, where there were only beds for six medical patients altogether, was to make his great discoveries with regard to aortic disease, and to lay the sound basis of the diagnosis of affections of the heart for all time. There are many passages in this address of Graves that might well serve for warnings to the present day and generation as regards methods of medical education which do not include sufficient practical teaching. He said, for instance: