Science and Culture, and Other EssaysHuxley, Thomas Henry
Philosophy
Science and Culture, and Other Essays
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
If I had the power to remodel Medical Education, the first two years of
the medical curriculum should be devoted to nothing but such thorough
study of Anatomy and Physiology, with Physiological Chemistry and
Physics; the student should then pass a real, practical examination in
these subjects; and, having gone through that ordeal satisfactorily,
he should be troubled no more with them. His whole mind should then be
given with equal intentness, to Therapeutics, in its broadest sense,
to Practical Medicine and to Surgery, with instruction in Hygiene and
in Medical Jurisprudence; and of these subjects only—surely there are
enough of them—should he be required to show a knowledge in his final
examination.
I cannot claim any special property in this theory of what the medical
curriculum should be, for I find that views, more or less closely
approximating these, are held by all who have seriously considered the
very grave and pressing question of Medical Reform; and have, indeed,
been carried into practice, to some extent, by the most enlightened
Examining Boards. I have heard but two kinds of objections to them.
There is, first, the objection of vested interests, which I will not
deal with here, because I want to make myself as pleasant as I can, and
no discussions are so unpleasant as those which turn on such points.
And there is, secondly, the much more respectable objection, which
takes the general form of the reproach that, in thus limiting the
curriculum, we are seeking to narrow it. We are told that the medical
man ought to be a person of good education and general information,
if his profession is to hold its own among other professions; that
he ought to know Botany, or else, if he goes abroad, he will not be
able to tell poisonous fruits from edible ones; that he ought to
know drugs, as a druggist knows them, or he will not be able to tell
sham bark and senna from the real articles; that he ought to know
Zoology, because—well, I really have never been able to learn exactly
why he is to be expected to know zoology. There is, indeed, a popular
superstition, that doctors know all about things that are queer or
nasty to the general mind, and may, therefore, be reasonably expected
to know the “barbarous binomials” applicable to snakes, snails, and
slugs; an amount of information with which the general mind is usually
completely satisfied. And there is a scientific superstition that
Physiology is largely aided by Comparative Anatomy—a superstition
which, like most superstitions, once had a grain of truth at bottom;
but the grain has become homœopathic, since Physiology took its modern
experimental development, and became what it is now, the application
of the principles of Physics and Chemistry to the elucidation of the
phenomena of life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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