"LECTURES, BOOKS, AND PRACTICAL TEACHING."

956 learn, finds that to him it is like taking away the key of knowledge; the professor, indeed, entering in, but he himself left out. The idle, careless, and lazy, as well as the dull and stupid, find in it, on the other hand, a veritable fool’s paradise. The master says the lesson; all that is required of them is to listen. The student comes to the class day after day without any sort of preparation, bringing with him, perhaps, a note-book or a piece of paper and a pencil or a pen. Should he be ever so desirous of profiting by the instruction he receives, unless he is a verbatim shorthand writer, which not one in a thousand is, he can at best carry away but a very garbled summary of the lecture he has heard, and he is remarkably clever if he can make anything like a connected story of it afterwards. If he does succeed in making sense out of it, ten chances to one it is not the sense the lecturer meant to convey, as, owing to the numerous errors and omissions made in the hurry of taking notes, mistakes are unavoidable. Who will maintain that these garbled notes " can rise above the usefulness of a text-book" ? Yet these are all that the most diligent student has to fall back upon, after 11 the systematic lecture informed by the spirit of a living man " has been once delivered. Would not the most ordinary commonplace text-book in the market be a more reliable, as well as a much more intelligible. guide than these? I could understand the admissibility, even the advisability, of this system of teaching three or four hundred years ago, when text- books were not to be had; but its continuation in the present day is utterly indefensible. It is good for nothing, were operated on successfully. in my opinion, but affording the professor an opportunity of Almanacks, Diaries, Pocket-books, &c. Among useful an- daily airing his own superior knowledge before his raw nuals of this class may be mentioned the following :- uninformed students. If the lecturer thinks he has got A wallet bound in Russia leather, capacious, and fitted something to impart which far transcends anything to be found in text-books, why not get it printed (from time to with the visiting list. A metallic diary, well made, for as he prepares it, if he chooses), require his students the breast-pocket, with ample room for daily memoranda. to provide themselves with copies, appoint daily the lesson A cloth-bound desk diary, providing an abundance of for next day, examine students on that lesson, the names writing space. One of smaller size for the pocket. A being selected at hazard, and give them marks according the appearances they make ?-these marks to enter as pocket diary about the dimensions of a visiting list, and to factors into the terms which regulate the granting of cerhandy. The full-size Rough Diary, bound, and in paper, tificates at the end of the session. Then, at the close of with a smaller edition. These are by Letts, and no special the lesson, let him supplement, illustrate by specimens, recommendation is required.-°° The British Almanac and drawings, models, experiments, &c., and perhaps, if time Companion" (Greenhill) comprises a mass of valuable in- permit, summarise the whole into small compass. In this formation in small compass, conveniently arranged. - way it would be about as difficult for a student to pass a class without knowing well the work of it as it Letter’s Patent Liquid Ink Pencil is an ingenious and likely through now is for him to know anything at all about it. -to prove a serviceable instrument, which to the advantageE But there is another aspect of the question. Which of of the pocket pencil adds those peculiar to ink-writing those two methods of teaching is best calculated to give a The apparatus, which resembles an ordinary propelling man those habits of study and accurate observation which to form the sound judgment so indispensable to pencil-case, is, in fact, a pen self-supplied with ink. Th4 combine the skilful physician or surgeon, who is constantly being as it meets a need article is certain to command attention called upon to advise men, not in affairs of little conseTo medical practitioners the " Liquid Ink Pencil" will b4 quence, but on matters of life and death ? Is it the present ,especially valuable for note-taking. system, or such a one as I have above indicated ? I fearlessly assert that the lecture system is pure cram;andthe more you have reason to have a living faith in the lecturer and in his ability to guide you aright," the more it is cram, "LECTURES, BOOKS, AND PRACTICAL for you are the more disposed to give a blind credence to all his utterances and the less to investigate for yourself; TEACHING." "to prove all things, and hold fast that which is good." To the Editor of THE LANCET. The result of the system is that, in the majority of cases, as SIR,—An an old student of Dr. Gairdner’s, permit me to soon as men 11 have passed," their studies are at an end. say a few words from a student’s point of view on the sub- Having never been trained to study, but only to listen to as soon as the lectures cease their studies (?) ject of his late introductory address on °‘ Lectures, Books, lectures, cease too. facto ipso Enough was crammed into them to and Practical Teaching." I may explain in palliation of pass, and that’s enough. my seeming presumption in venturing to question any of Is there any other profession or trade which men can the dicta of my old and highly esteemed preceptor in medi- walk into by a royal road with their gloves on, where the cine, that I am, or at least was, a practical teacher myself, student goes idle and master does the work? How would and as such made it my special study to find out, if pos- it suit, for example, in engineering, either civil or mechabut a thorough knowledge of the subject, nical ? sible, the best methods of learning and communicating obtainedNothing both with head and hand, will by self-application, knowledge to others. do there. Is medicine, which has to do with the issues of In the system of teaching by lectures, the professcir life and death, a less important study than these, that the learns the daily lesson, and says it to the students, insteadi superficial knowledge which listening to lectures can give of the students learning it and saying it to him. ThiEs is deemed sufficient for it ? I have no hesitation, therefore, in giving it as my decided may be the way to develop the professor’s own mind; but lI opinion that the best system of teaching medicine is not venture to say it is not the way to make thoroughly the lecture system. I am, Sir, yours, gravnded students; just about as far the reverse as pos J. DIAMOND, M.D. sibic. The earnest, hard working student, who really wanti

and each meeting lasts three days. The papers read and ’the discussions upon them are reported. The volume before ’us forms the Transactions of the first meeting of the Society. It contains several papers of very great value, among which we would mention the Etiology of Flexures, with their proper treatment, by Emmet; Extirpation of the functionally active Ovaries, by Batty; Central Rupture of the Perineum, by Matthews Duncan ; the Relations of Pregnancy to Gemeral Pathology, by Robert Barnes; Latent Gonorrhoea, by Noeggerath and others. The President’s (Dr. Fordyce Barker’s) Address is a brief sketch of the progress of gyneecology during the previous hundred years. It possesses not only the interest inherent to the subject, but also the charm of elegant vigorous writing, and it is moreover full of useful suggestions for future investigators. The volume is a valuable contribution to the literature of gynaecology, and .augurs well for the future of the new Society. La Independencia Médica (Barcelona).—The earlier numbers o’f this journal for the present year contain clinical essays on Pellegra and upon Venereal Coxalgia, by Dr. Juan - Gice, and an interesting case is given by Dr. Carreras y Arago, of a captain in the Carlist war who received a ball in the back of the neck, which emerged at the mastoid process. Diabetes and cataracts supervened. The latter

to

-

time,

.

-