The place assigned by Dr. Michael Foster to topographical Anatomy in Medical education, will certainly hold good in the education of the Dental Surgeon. Physiology and Chemistry, subjects now inseparable and of surpassing interest, are equally necessary to the Special and General Surgeon. The position of Medicine and Surgery is not quite parallel. The general principles of each must be thoroughly known, but it is not necessary that the Dental Surgeon should be practically acquainted with all the details that pertain to any other branch of either than that which he selects to practice. It is not needful that he should become a skilful midwife or oculist, or that he should be skilled in the treatment in any other class of diseases than those to the treatment of which he proposes to devote his life. For if he does acquire such detailed knowledge, it will, when no longer used, “fade like a raindrop upon a porous stone,” and the time devoted to the acquisition will have been wasted, and, perhaps, worse even than wasted, for the subject may have been studied at the cost of neglect of the practical study of his speciality. It does not admit of doubt that the high degree of manual skill, without which the professed dentist is but a shameless pretender, can be acquired best, perhaps can be fully acquired only during youth; that if the acquisition be put off till a medical education is completed, the golden opportunity will have been lost. Mr. Fawcett tells us that the blind may acquire manual skill sufficient to secure independence, but that it can be gained only during youth. The adult blind, he says, have a greatly diminished power of learning. The time may come when the principles of Medicine and Surgery will be taught before their special application to any particular class of disease, and their modification resulting therefrom is entered upon. Till that time arrive, it will be in the interest of the Dental Surgeon to study with the utmost care the general principles and their application to his own speciality, and to acquire, while he can, a very full and perfect knowledge, practical, as well as scientific, of Dental Surgery, before he enters upon a detailed study of their application to any other branch or subject of Medicine or Surgery, the practice of which he does not propose to follow, and a trustworthy knowledge of which can not be retained or extended in the absence of continuous general practice.