"If I were a despot," he said, "I would
cut down the theoretical branches to a very considerable extent." He
would discard comparative anatomy and botany, materia medica, and
chemistry and physics, except as applied to physiology, from the
medical student's course. At first sight, this seems a hard saying,
but it is to be remembered that at that time the normal curriculum of
a medical student lasted only four years, a space of time barely
sufficient for the necessary minimum of purely medical and surgical
work. Huxley's view was that chemistry and physics, botany and
zooelogy, should be part of the general education, not of the special
medical education; he wished students to spend one or two years after
their ordinary career at school in work on these elementary scientific
subjects, and then to begin their medical course free from the burden
of extra-professional subjects. With certain limits due to the
different local conditions in different teaching centres Huxley's
system is being adopted. In most cases the authorities in medical
education are unable to leave the whole responsibility of the
elementary education in science to the schools from which medical
students come, as the conditions under which scientific subjects are
still taught in schools leave much to be desired.
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