The Nervous System and the Mind

Not very many years ago, courses of lectures on Physiology used to be prefaced by an apology from the lecturer for occupying the time of the students with a subject which did not directly concern the treatment of patients, and by a laboured exposition of the various uses of a knowledge of physiology. Such an apology would not now be either needed or tolerated. The least intelligent of men needs now no explanation to convince him of the necessity of a knowledge of the normal as preliminary to a knowledge of the abnormal. The rawest of students requires no proof to show him that he cannot understand disorder of a function until he has some knowledge of its healthy working. Physi ology is no longer considered a useless subject arbitrarily added to the medical curriculum by tyrannical examiners for the mere purpose of increasing the burden to be borne by students. So far we congratulate ourselves on a distinct advance of Opinion. But the advance is not yet quite far enough. One branch of medical science has remained in this respect absolutely stationary. There is one department of medicine, and only one, in which a knowledge of the normal is not only not considered as a necessary preliminary to a knowledge of the abnormal, but is openly scoffed at, jeered at and derided.

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