a subject than to have faced problems in it himself as an original enquirer. And, after rudiments have been once fairly acquired, there is for good students no training equal to that given by following even a small research under an experienced leader.

SCHOOL OF THOUGHT.

So truly does the laboratory become a school of thought. Your laboratories are arranged with admirable provision for research. The student should enter on his study of natural science through the portal of its fundamental experiments. The attitude his mind thus takes is the true one-the only true one-for further insight into his subject. Too often humanistic studies at school have tended to kill the natural philosopher within him-that innate curiosity for facts, the healthy heritage of childhood. He leaves school a little book-man. Even as to the phenomena of nature, he has been insensibly led to ask for statements upon authority, rather than to turn his own sense and observation to the phenomena themselves. To learn a science or acquire an art resting upon the sciences, the first thing to do is to look at the fundamental facts for yourself. Our great teachers of medicine teach upon this plan. They teach where they learned, not in the library, but from the bedside of the sick. In laboratories such as those raised here for pathology, physiology, and hygiene, students can learn these sciences as medicine is learned in the hospital ward, by direct enquiry into nature. The teachers you give them are men who have won widely-recognized distinction themselves as direct enquirers into nature. Worthy students will appreciate the double boon their Alma Mater gives them-the means of learning at first hand those secrets of his craft's skill-and to learn them under guidance by men who excel in unravelling such secrets.

ENGLISH ACTION.

Only by enabling men to continue their learning after their teaching is over can secure the greatest advantage any educational system can afford. Your laboratories here will encourage post-graduate work. We look with keen interest to the researches that will flow from them. No subjects offer finer fields for research than do the progressive studies, physiology, pathology and hygiene, to which your new University buildings are consecrated. And of the functions of a laboratory, research is not the least costly. We in the Old Country find that. Our central government has done little to support research. Our nation, proud of its success in things practical, has been prone to despise the abstract and the theoretical. We do so foolishly; we do so at our peril. Behind all practical application there is a region of intellectual action to which, though our practical men have

contributed little, they owe the whole of their supplies. Theory, if a goose, is the goose of the fairy tale that lays the golden eggs. No more such eggs, if once you let her die. To speak of theoretic knowledge slightingly is for the lips of the fool. The value of abstract research to a country is becoming more widely acknowledged among us than it was. Sir John Brunner said the other day, at Liverpool, that there was no better investment for a business man than the encouragement of scientific research, and that every penny of the wealth he possesses has come from the application of science to commerce and manufacture. And we find that munificent citizens have and do come forward among us and meet, by their individual gifts, the pressing needs, in this respect, of our community at large.

NEW ERA DAWNING.

But we welcome a new era dawning on us. Liverpool, Birmingham, Sheffield, and other great centres begin to regard the local university as an institution entitled to support from the public means; for instance, by subsidy from public rates. Such subsidies can be used also for studies which do not come within allotment from the smaller subsidy from the central government: medicine, for instance. Proud of the young universities-to which yours of Toronto is a time-honored veteran-communities and local governments are encouraging reseach within our universities. They do not expect such research to be able to pay its own way, but they recognize that indirectly it does pay the community that gives it a home. They feel it a duty which they owe themselves. Is not the university a part of their own life, and is not research a part of the university's life-blood? They feel it a right due to their own higher selves. It stimulates progress. Supported by the large-handed sympathy of the community and the local government, it means quicker advance, both material and mental; it means invention, and it means medical discovery. And qui facit alnum facit per se is a motto worthy of the State.

USES OF LABORATORIES.

What, then, are finally the uses of these laboratories now opened by your University? They will assist in training men for various honorable callings, especially for that most ancient one of medicine. They will assist, no doubt, also to render life by practical applications of science superficially still more different from what it was only a short generation ago. They will assist to bring home and distribute to vour community treasures of knowledge from all quarters of the globe. They will assist and it is a thought dear to a high-spirited people-themselves to add to the sum total of the treasures of knowledge of the whole human race.

"Noblesse oblige" appeals to chivalrous nations as well as to chivalrous individuals.

But their highest office seems to me, perhaps, not even these high ones, but a more difficult still. Genius cannot by any community, however wealthy and powerful, be made to order. In Biblical language, it is the gift of God. All a community can do toward obtaining it, be our riches and willingness a thousandfold what they are, is to ensure the rare and glorious plant a meed of freedom, light and warmth for blossoming upon our soil. Who can doubt that in this population here genius exists-not sown, it is true, broadcast, for nowhere is it thus-yet existent, scattered up and down? This it is for the community to foster, to discover.

By help of these finely built and finished laboratories this much in one direction can be done. The problem to which a wise country turns is the discovery less of things than of men. By these laboratories, adequately supported, your community can create opportunities for the exercise of powers which come from sources within itself, but are utterly beyond its power to produce at will. Their loftiest function is creation of this opportunity. For that aim the studies in them must be followed with no single narrow technical purpose, but must be wide of scope and full of access to every rank of students. So shall these laboratories prove a cornerstone for the upbuilding of a temple of knowledge, and a touchstone for the best ore of intellect within the bounds of this great land.

THE MASTER-WORD IN MEDICINE.*

BY WILLIAM OSLER, M.D., F.R.S.,

Professor of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.

I.

BEFORE proceeding to the pleasing duty of addressing the undergraduates, as a native of this province and as an old student of this school, I must say a few words on the momentous changes inaugurated with this session, the most important, perhaps, which have taken place in the history of the profession in Ontario. The splendid laboratories, which we saw opened this afternoon, a witness to the appreciation by the authorities of the needs of science in medicine, makes possible the highest standards of education in the subjects upon which our Art is based. They may do more. A liberal policy, with a due regard to the truth that the greatness of a school lies in brains not bricks, should build up' a great scientific centre which will bring renown to this city and to our country. The men in charge of the departments are of the right stamp. See to it that you treat them in the right way by giving skilled assistance enough to ensure that the vitality of men who could work for the world is not sapped by the routine of teaching. One regret will, I know, be in the minds of many of my younger hearers. The removal of the departments of anatomy and physiology from the biological laboratory of the university breaks a connection which has had an important influence on medicine in this city. To Professor Ramsay Wright is due much of the inspiration which has made possible these fine new laboratories. For years he has encouraged in every way the cultivation of the scientific branches of medicine, and has unselfishly devoted much time to promoting the best interests of the Medical Faculty. And in passing let me pay a tribute to the ability and zeal with which Dr. A. B. Macallum has won for himself a world-wide reputation by intricate studies which have carried the name or this University to every nook and corner of the globe where the science of physiology is cultivated. How much you owe to him in connection with the new buildings I need scarcely mention to this audience.

But the other event which we celebrate is of much greater importance. When the money is forthcoming it is an easy matter to join stone to stone in a stately edifice, but it is hard to find

An address to medical students on the occasion of the opening of the new buildings of the Medical Faculty of the University of Toronto, October 1st, 1903.

the market in which to buy the precious cement which can unite into an harmonious body the professors of medicine of two rival medical schools in the same city. That this has been accomplished so satisfactorily is a tribute to the good sense of the leaders of the two faculties, and tells of their recognition of the needs of the profession of the province. Is it too much. to look forward to the absorption or affiliation of the Kingston and London schools into the Provincial University? The day has passed in which the small school without full endowment can live a life beneficial to the students, to the profession, or to the public. I know well of the sacrifice of time and money which is freely made by the teachers of those schools; and they will not misunderstand my motives when I urge them to commit suicide, at least so far as to change their organizations into clinical schools in affiliation with the central university, as part, perhaps, of a widespread affiliation of the hospitals of the province. A school of the first rank in the world, such as this must become, should have ample clinical facilities under its own control. It is as much a necessity that the professors of medicine and surgery, etc., should have large hospital services under their control throughout the year, as it is that professors of pathology and physiology should have laboratories such as those in which we here meet. It should be an easy matter to arrange between the provincial authorities and the trustees of the Toronto General Hospital to replace the present antiquated system of multiple small services by modern well-equipped clinics-three in medicine and three in surgery to begin with. The increased efficiency of the service would be a substantial quid pro quo, but there would have to be a self-denying ordinance on the part of many of the attending physicians. With the large number of students in the combined school, no one hospital can furnish in practical medicine, surgery and the specialties a training in the art an equivalent of that which the student will have in the sciences in the new laboratories. An affiliation should be sought with every other hospital in the city and province of fifty beds and over, in each of which two or three extra-mural teachers could be recognized, who would receive for three or more months a number of students proportionate to the beds in the hospital. I need not mention names. We all know men in Ottawa, Kingston, London, Hamilton, Guelph and Chatham, who could take charge of small groups of the senior students and make of them good practical doctors. I merely through out the suggestion. There are difficulties in the way; but is there anything in this life worth struggling for which does not bristle with them?

Students of medicine: may this day be to each one of you,