everlasting test-tube, and to make, for instance, some of the historic experiments with gases.
Human anatomy again was always taught practically, i.e., by work in the dissecting-room. But owing to the manner in which medical students were examined, the subject failed to have the value it might have had; minute questions were asked which no amount of dissecting would enable us to answer. The book had to be learned by heart, and I shudder as I remember the futile labour entailed. And the examination was so arranged, that whilst we were “cramming” anatomy we had also to suffer over another subject, materia medica, which was almost entirely useless, and wearisome beyond belief. Much of it was about as rational a subject to a physician as to a surgeon would be a minute knowledge of how his knives were made and how steel is manufactured. I remember how, after getting through this double ordeal of cram on drugs and on the structure of the body, I heard a surgeon say in lecture: “This is one of the very few occasions on which you must know your anatomy.” I recall the anger and contempt I then felt for the educational authorities, as I remembered the drudgery I had gone through.
The want of organised practical work in zoology was perhaps a blessing in disguise. For it led me to struggle with the subject by myself. I used to get snails and slugs and dissect their dead bodies, comparing my results with books hunted up in the University Library, and this was a real bit of education. I remember too that a thoughtful brother sent me a dead porpoise, which (to the
best of my belief) I dissected, to the horror of the bedmaker, in my College rooms.
Then the late Mr. Clark, superintendent of the Museum of Zoology, and one of the kindest of men, occasionally gave us beasts to cut up. I shall never forget my pride of heart when a preparation which I made of a hedgehog’s inside was placed in the Museum.
Just as I was leaving Cambridge in 1869 or ’70 there arrived that great man, Sir Michael Foster, who organised the revolution in which the futilities of the early 19th century were blown to fragments, and in their place a sound system of practical instruction was created. Foster was discovered by Huxley, and it was through him, and thanks to the patriotism of Trinity College in creating for him the post of Praelector, that Foster got this great opportunity. The effect of what he did for English education has been incalculably great. His pupils have gone forth into all lands, and have spread the art of learning and teaching wherever they have come to rest.
In thinking over the reformation wrought by Michael Foster I am somehow—quite inconsistently—reminded of the great scene in Guy Mannering. I see in imagination the cold dark cave at Warroch Head, where Dirk Hatteraick lurks; he plays the part of False Science in the Mystery Play, and the cave is the Cave of Inanity. Then comes the great flare of light, as Meg Merrilees throws the torch on to the heap of flax, and her cry, “The hour is come and the man!” while Harry Bertram with his supporters rush in and bind False Science fast.
Harry Bertram is, of course, Michael Foster, and I should say that Dandie Dinmont is Coutts Trotter. Meg Merrilees is naturally Huxley, who was the magician of the affair (she is always said to have looked like a man). Here all analogy breaks down. Meg was killed by False Science, Huxley was not; indeed it was the other way. Harry Bertram lived happily ever afterwards. Michael Foster was not so fortunate, and I am ashamed to think that before he died he was misunderstood and half forgotten in his own University.
I must apologise for this outburst of incoherence; I am afraid it was not this sort of thing that Tyndall had in mind when he pleaded for the scientific imagination—that is something much more serious.
Not only does the student of to-day get good practical teaching, but he has the great advantage of being under professors who are generally engaged in original work. And if a man can afford the time to stay up after his degree, he is encouraged and helped to undertake research. If practical teaching is the foundation, the protoplasm as it were, of scientific education, I am sure that original work is its soul or spirit.