fusion, obscurity, and incomprehensible disorder; and all because he has begun at the wrong end; all because he has been introduced at once to the complexities of disease as they occur in nature, without the previous explanations which are afforded by a regular and systematic study of the elementary facts of the science.

Will it be believed that this is really and truly what the Wor→ shipful Society are proposing to do? Will it be credited that this is the method according to which they are going to instruct, and have actually been instructing, the general practitioners for the last fifteen years? We know that they and their friends and abettors will stoutly deny the whole, and contend that such is not the intention of the Act, and is not its effect. For this we do not care. We are accustomed to deal with misrepresentation; and let the apothecaries and their friends assert what they please, we maintain that the effect of the apprenticeship, if it does any thing at all, is to thrust the student at once, without elementary principles, or the guidance of fundamental education, into the practice of medicine and surgery, in all its complexity, discordance, and obscurity.

It is impossible for those not actually engaged in the business of educating young men to comprehend or appreciate one tithe, nay, one-hundredth part of the evils resulting from this system. Some young men are utterly and entirely disgusted with the business the first month, and retain this feeling through the course of a long life. Sickened with the practice of a profession, in which they see no general principles, no beautiful symmetrical simplicity, no regularity of effects and causes, and in which, from the preposterous mode in which they have been initiated, they despair of finding any,-they naturally, but very absurdly, imagine it is all obscurity and confusion, and the whole business of treatment a system of random hap-hazard measures. This delusion may last long, and it makes its unhappy victims either ignorant empirics and charlatans, or mere superficial dispensers through life. Others get into a careless routine method of practice, in which, as they see no occasion for the exertion of intellect or reflection, they never either reflect or reason; and the whole business of treating patients is reduced, as their patrons wish it to be, to a system of routine and mechanical administration of drugs,-the same endless round of powders, pills, draughts, and boluses. All of them imbibe many absurd and erroneous notions regarding the functions of the human body; and these it is often utterly impossible for lectures of any kind, or any place, to eradicate. Such is a fair view of the least of the evils of the method of education by apprenticeship. We doubt not that many more actually take place, and could

be presented. But these, we conceive, are sufficient to demonstrate the inherent and insurmountable absurdity of a system so preposterous.

Let us advert, however, to the effect of apprenticeships viewed as means of education. When a young gentleman decides on following the profession of medicine, the first question is the particular branch,-physician, surgeon, or general practitioner; and the next comes to be the most convenient and suitable mode of initiating him. If he is destined to be a physician, it occasionally happens that he is sent forthwith to some university, in order to proceed in the regular manner. It sometimes happens, however, that it is thought expedient for him to begin the business under a surgeon or surgeon-apothecary, or, in other words, a general practitioner. It is further manifest, that whenever a young man is destined for the latter department of the profession, this is the most usual course followed.

At the age of sixteen or seventeen, therefore, or even later, when the young candidate for the honour and responsibility of man-midwife and surgeon in ordinary is emancipated from the immediate dominion of the master of the grammar-school, he is forthwith placed under the care of the family medical attendant, or the nearest respectable surgeon-apothecary as an articled apprentice of five years' duration. He is then initiated into the profound mysteries of the pestle and mortar, the moulding of pills, the mixing of ointments, the preparation of juleps, and all the arcana of the adept apothecary. With this important duty he occasionally combines that of conveying the bottles, boxes, and packets to their respective destinations, until he becomes intimately acquainted with the localities of his master's practice, and the beat of his visits. At the end of eighteen months or two years, he is permitted to visit one or two of the patients along with some of the senior apprentices, and he witnesses, along with these learned Thebans, the usual mode of treating patients under the care of the general practitioner. At length, after other eighteen months or two years more, he is entrusted with the care of a few cases; and as he himself becomes a senior while others drop away, and juniors are placed under him, he is elevated from the inglorious drudgery of the pestle and mortar, and gradually, but finally, is raised to the dignity of trotting or galloping over the parish on a smart gelding, as the representative of the master among that class of patients, whose finances are not understood to be capable of rewarding the attendance of the great man.

In the meantime, it is naturally asked by the parents or guardians of such a young man, what provision is made for his systematic and elementary instruction ? He is indeed initiated

in the practical details of seeing patients, and prescribing, or sending, or administering medicines; but where are the means by which he is instructed in the great elementary principles of medicine?

In London, indeed, and in such large towns as Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, and Liverpool, where there are medical schools and lecturers on various branches of medical and surgical knowledge, the apprentice may have the means, if his master allows him leisure and opportunity, to obtain some knowledge of anatomy, physiology, chemistry, pharmacy, nosology, pathology, and surgery; and we admit, that several of the apprentices bred in these towns are really well initiated into these fundamental branches of medical knowledge. But how is it possible to obtain this part of the sufficient education in towns in which these opportunities do not exist? There are in England and Wales many towns with population between 10,000 and 40,000 or 60,000 souls, in which there is not a single medical lecture delivered, and in which, consequently, the apprentices during the five years, or even if they are allowed to get off at four, learn nothing, and can learn nothing but the routine of a random medical practice, without the guidance of general principles, and without even knowing a single reason for one of the practical measures which the master is in the daily habit of ordering,

It is of no avail to tell us that this is not the fact; that the pupils are taught the principles at the same time with the practice; and that the master either undertakes to instruct his apprentices in the elementary principles, or allows them to go to places where they can enjoy those opportunities. We maintain that it is physically impossible that in any place, excepting those above-specified, the apprentices can have these opportunities, and that at the end of the five years they are, and must be, ignorant of all the most necessary and important knowledge for a young man to possess in entering on medical practice. A young man who has commenced his apprenticeship at the age of sixteen or seventeen, as we have supposed, quits his master at twentyone or twenty-two, ignorant of the most common facts regarding the structure and functions of the human body. This is applicable to all the apprentices educated at such places as Bath, Brighton, Chichester, Winchester, Southampton, Canterbury, Gloucester, Worcester, Northampton, Norwich, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln, Lancaster, York, Durham, Newcastle, and many similar places too numerous to recount, at neither of .which there is a single lecturer or lectureship of any kind.

That such is the actual effect of this measure of five years apprenticeships, we know from numerous examples within our own personal knowledge. We have known instances of apprentices who have finished their statutory period, coming to this

city for the purpose of attending lectures, and ignorant at this time of the most common anatomical and chemical principles. We have known not a few examples of this kind, in which the individuals, simply from the circumstance of not residing in a town with a medical school, did not know the number of bones in the fore-arm or leg, although they had seen the treatment of fractures of both; did not know the anatomy of the shoulderjoint, though they had assisted to reduce luxations of it; knew nothing of the site of the stomach and course of the intestinal canal, though they had repeatedly given to many persons medicines to act on both; and who knew not the chemical characters of alkalis and acids, though in the daily habit of preparing mixtures containing either or both. That such practitioners order mixtures of sulphate of magnesia and phosphate of soda, or sulphate of quinine and tartrate of antimony, is not wonderful. Such evils are not the fault either of the young gentlemen themselves or of their masters; but they result from the system under which the Act compels them to be educated.

All apprentices, therefore, educated by the surgeons or surgeon-apothecaries of such towns, must, at the close of their ap prenticeship, proceed to London, or some similar place, in order to obtain that course of systematic instruction which is requisite to enable them to understand the just application of the practical measures, the knowledge of which they have previously acquired. In so doing, however, one of two effects results. After a young man has already spent much time and money in obtaining the practical knowledge of his profession, his friends, naturally anxious to economise both of these commodities, are generally desirous that he should spend the shortest possible time prescrib ed, for the purpose of acquiring what is called by the Apothecaries a sufficient medical education; and the result is, that this part of his instruction, and especially the important business of anatomical study, pathological anatomy, and clinical medicine, are obtained in a very hurried and imperfect manner.

On this principle we daily hear them putting questions and making proposals by what means they may shorten their abode here or in London, in order to be able at a certain period to enter on business; and the grand and primary cause of all this acceleration and abbreviation towards the latter part of their career, is the long time necessarily spent in the apprenticeship at its commencement and middle. Five years between fifteen or sixteen, and twenty or twenty-one, make such an immense part of the active period of the life of a diligent young man, that when he finds he has spent them in acquiring the knowledge of a few forms, and in repeating the 600th time the same process, without novelty, variation, addition, or emendation, he begins to feel the irresistible necessity of converting his actual acquisi

tions to some useful purpose, and to commune with himself, now that he has satisfied the inexorable apothecaries, whether he cannot, without further delay, satisfy the public that he is competent to drug their persons and drain their purses. It is easy to see that in such a frame of mind he will not be very desirous to spend more time or money in attending lectures or visiting hospitals.

The Worshipful Company themselves admit that the number of students under the act attending the medical schools now alluded to in the different provincial districts, amounts, including those of London, which are perhaps not less than a half, to 1300 nearly, and that 2000 are serving apprenticeships in other parts of the kingdom; that is to say, 2000 at the lowest computation are studying medicine by routine practice, first for five years, without being taught any elementary science, or initiated into the principles of the art, and must then proceed to London, Edinburgh, or some similar place, and hurry over, in the short space of two seasons or 18 months, in an imperfect and hasty manner, a course of study which, without the apprenticeship, they might have pursued in a deliberate and systematic method for the space of three years and a-half or four years. If to this 2000 we add the proportion already in London and Edinburgh, of those who have been apprentices, and who are now undergoing the same ordeal, the number actually taught in this preposterous method will not be one under 2500, and it may amount perhaps to nearly 3000. Such are the results of the apprenticeship system.

Now, let the Society and their friends assert what they please. We maintain it is impossible that it can be otherwise, so long as the clause regarding apprenticeship is imperative and indispensible, unless they were to resort to the extraordinary and impracticable measure of establishing schools with hospitals, dissecting-rooms, and lectureships, in every town, great and small, in England and Wales, in which apprentices are taught and apprenticeships are served. We believe there has been some report of increasing the number of these schools, and, above all, of establishing one at Newcastle, which would certainly, under the circumstances, be requisite. But this solitary addition, or even half a dozen new schools, would be of no use, unless there was one in every town of a population of from 2000 to 4000. To this part of the scheme, however, it is evident there are insurmountable objections and insuperable difficulties; and the 2000 unhappy apprentices who are distributed through the unschooled parts of the country, must continue to serve their full five years in learning routine, and then come to London or some similar place, and obtain the sufficient education of the Society, to the great waste of time and depletion of their purses.