"The chief objection to our present mode of teaching is that, however well inclined the student may be, he is never obliged to exercise his own judgment in distinguishing diseases and has no opportunity of trying his skill in their cure, and consequently at the end of his studies he is perhaps well grounded in the accessory sciences--is a perfect medical logician--able to arrange the names of diseases in their classes, orders and different subdivisions; he may be master of the most difficult theories of modern physiologists; he may have heard, seen and, if a member of the medical society, he may also have talked a great deal; but at the end of all this preparation what is he when he becomes a full doctor?--a practitioner who has never practised!" These words have quite as suggestive applications to most phases of our modern education as they had to that of Graves' time. There are other passages that bear so significant a meaning in this regard that one can scarcely refrain from quoting: "Our present method of instruction is indeed very useful and nothing better can be devised for a beginner; but for {183} the more advanced student it is by no means sufficient, nor is it calculated to give him practical experience, without which all other acquirements are of no avail. I say it does not give him experience, because he has at no time been charged with the responsibility of investigating a case for himself, and by himself; because at no time has he been called on to make a diagnosis, unassisted by others; and above all because he has never been obliged to act upon that diagnosis and prescribe the method of treatment. If those who had been thus educated, and who had been made doctors upon so slender a foundation, were to confess the truth, we should be presented with a picture calculated to excite dismay if not a stronger feeling. How many doubts and distracting anxieties attend such a man at his first patient's bedside. If the disease be acute and life in imminent danger, and if he shrink under this sudden and unusual load of responsibility, he gains little credit for professional ability. If, on the contrary, inexperienced as he is, he assumes that decision of judgment, that energy of practice which experience alone can confer, is it not probable that the result will be still more disastrous?" Graves' last days and the circumstances of his death and burial are given by Professor Stokes, his great personal friend, and himself one of the most distinguished physicians of his time. We quote the concluding paragraph of Professor Stokes' biographical notice: