lessons, supplementary to the laboratory work, from one of these. For the teacher who has a limited knowledge of the subject, or who does not expect to continue the work of teaching biology, this is probably the most satisfactory way. But the books available may be behind the times, and, while a book may be satisfactory in most respects, it is never without some fault, in the eyes of the teacher. It may completely satisfy the ideas of the author under the conditions for which it was written, but there is no text which will meet every requirement in any part of the country. For example, the specimen on which the illustration is based in the text may not be available for laboratory study.

Every teacher has felt that if the good in one book or the theories of one author could be combined with one or two others, an ideal textbook would result. A professor in a college attains this ideal by combining the knowledge he gleans from various sources in his lectures. But it is doubtful whether pupils of the second year of the high school are able to take profitable lecture notes without making the lecture a tedious dictation and a great waste of time. The student expects and needs a textbook, and it is probably not advisable to withhold it. If each teacher could make a text of his own, in which he could combine the good in all the works to which he has access, and if the hobbies of some authors could be eliminated, and the teacher could incorporate a few of his own, and if the text need never get behind the times, the arrangement would be most agreeable and satisfactory. The writer has been able to accomplish this with results, satisfactory to himself at least, by a series of mimeographed schedules which are given out, a sheet at a time, and written in the books with the laboratory notes. Of course, a part of these schedules consists of information which is merely copied. Things like the history of biological science or the theories of the mechanical nature of protoplasm can be presented in no other way. But the major part is composed of questions on the laboratory, lecture, or field work, which are intended to bring out the relationships of the forms studied and the general biological laws or facts. The following are two examples which will illustrate the point better than an explanation:

Botany study schedule No. 1.-(Answer in the form of a continuous essay in the notebooks on the left side of the page.) Will there be a greater difference between the plants of two different branches than between those of two different classes of the same branch? Why must this be true? Between what two divisions will there be the least difference? Of what does the scientific name of every plant or animal consist? Where do the lowest plants of the plant kingdom live? What conditions are found in such places? Warm air causes water to evaporate, whether it be in ponds or in the bodies of plants. If the water in a plant evaporates faster than it can be replaced, the plant wilts and dies. What do land plants, trees for example, possess which prevents the water in them from evaporating too rapidly? Why must gloeocapsa live in a moist place? etc. Zoology study schedule No. 39.- Development of the nervous system. What was the first animal we studied that had a nervous system? Describe this system. Of what two essential parts does the system in this case consist? What is the characteristic and

peculiar form of a nerve-cell ? What is the function of each part? Of what is a so-called nerve-fiber composed? What was the form of the nervous system in the nemathelminthes? What is the position of the nerve cords? etc., etc.

These study schedules are mimeographed on sheets of white paper about 7 by 10 inches, and one of this size can be used for the assignment of lessons for about two weeks.

By the use of such a system as the above not only does the teacher work with his own text-book, but the pupils, in answering the questions, must depend upon their own laboratory work and the notes they have taken. This makes the accuracy of the notebook an important detail, and this fact the students are not slow to see. They feel that the book is their own work, and with the greater interest that this thought brings they are more careful about the material that goes into it.

If both the laboratory course and the work outside the class are offered by means of schedules, we have a perfectly elastic system, which may be modified from year to year, and is easily expanded in one place or cut down in another to fit the scarcity or abundance of laboratory material. It may also be used as supplementary to a text-book. The teacher need not necessarily be able to use a typewriter to get out sheets of the kind mentioned, as there are persons in every city who are willing to do this work at a nominal sum.

SUMMARY

The writer advocates the following plan for the course in high-school biology:

1. Laboratory work upon the fauna and flora of the locality in which the course is offered, and the specimens in the laboratory. This is to be supplemented by (a) field expeditions, and (b) collections by the student.

2. Work done outside the class. This is to be guided by schedules which consist of (a) general information, and (b) questions based on the field and laboratory work. 3. The keeping of careful notes on both the above divisions of work.

Such a course encourages independent thought on the part of the student, and tends to keep the teacher from becoming narrow thru the use of a single text. The greatest disadvantage attending its use is the amount of work involved. This labor, however, decreases each year, and even during the first year it does not amount to much more than that which the adoption of a new text-book involves.

A NEW METHOD OF TEACHING PHYSIOLOGY WILLIAM TOWNSEND PORTER, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY IN THE HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL, BOSTON, MASS.

No profession is older than medicine and none more new. In the medical schools subjects taught three thousand years ago stand by the side of those unknown in the youth of men still active. Anatomy is more

ancient than the obelisks; embryology and bacteriology are children of today. Physiology, too, is of recent origin. It has broken away from anatomy. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes taught both subjects in the same course of lectures. The teaching of physiology has naturally been greatly influenced by methods employed in the teaching of anatomy. Descriptive anatomy became the most conspicuous discipline in medicine at a time when the chief mental training was obtained from books. Joined to the powerful example of the most liberal education of that period was the difficulty of obtaining material for dissection. Thus necessity supported the mistaken theory that natural science could be learned from verbal description. To this day in many schools most of the instruction in anatomy remains didactic and consists of books, diagrams, and more or less misleading models.

Practical necessity and false theory have kept the teaching of physiology also upon the wrong path. Physiology, it is true, does not need the cadaver, but it needs much that seemed impossible. It is even yet believed that the cost of apparatus and other materials is prohibitory, that students cannot master the details of exact experimentation, that delicate apparatus cannot be trusted in their hands, and that instruction to the extent required cannot be given to large classes because the course will become too complicated to be carried out. So, in physiology as in anatomy, an apparently unavoidable makeshift has supported incorrect theory. Nature is studied apart from nature-by reading or hearing descriptions at second hand of what some third person saw. This error has been strengthened by the example of teachers of the law. The fundamental difference between the natural sciences and other disciplines, such as the law, has been forgotten. The material of the law is in books. Words give with accuracy the principles and rulings which constitute the law. It is not so in natural phenomena. These cannot be well described. If words would serve, the blind would see. You cannot know a man's voice until you have heard it. No one would willingly employ a physician who had never examined a patient. Yet there are many books that describe as well as books can the symptoms of disease. Disease is the abnormal action of living organs; physiology treats of their normal action. If their abnormal action cannot be learned from books, neither can their normal action.

Efforts have been made to better the hearsay method of teaching physiology. In most schools of medicine the lectures in physiology are enlivened by occasional demonstrations. In a few schools certain experiments are performed by the students themselves. Yet the mediaval tradition still holds. The stress is upon the didactic teaching. The student rests on the authority of the professor and the text-book. The experiments follow the lecture and attempt to verify its statements. The weakness of this method is easily perceived. A natural phenomenon cannot be understood without personal experience, either of the phe

nomenon itself or of other phenomena so closely related that the memory of them will combine in the mind to form a sense-image of the new phenomenon. If there has been no personal experience, there will be no memories to rouse and words will fail. Many of the phenomena in physiology for example, the peristalsis of hollow viscera-are entirely unlike anything else in nature; they must be personally sensed. Other physiological phenomena are so complicated as to defy reproduction in the mind by combination of the memories of their many constituents. These are unanswerable arguments. It is well, however, to submit to actual experiment the reactions of the student to the stimuli of education. I have made such observations on the students in the Harvard Medical School during the past ten years. From the first to the sixth year of this period what I have called the traditional method of teaching physiology was employed. The examination of students taught in this way showed, as was inevitable, an undeniable lack of comprehension of physiological phenomena lying outside the student's own experience. Moreover, these students treated physiology as a descriptive and not as a rational science. Their point of view was wrong. In this they were undoubtedly influenced by their study of anatomy. Anatomy is a descriptive science; it deals with units, and these units are at rest. The student aims at visual memory; often he satisfies himself with the memory of a diagram or a model. Physiology deals chiefly with units in action; each influencing the others. The circulation of the blood, for example, is not a fixed state, to be memorized, but is, at any given moment, an equilibrium resulting from the interaction of many shifting factors. The factors must be severally known and the result of their interaction be reasoned out. If the factors have not been acquired largely by personal observation, the mind will not grasp them with sufficient clearness to enable their subsequent combination. The truth of these remarks is borne out by the failure of students to answer certain questions even when they had known for weeks that these questions would be asked at the examination. For the most part, physiology cannot be memorized, but must be understood. The final test of the undergraduate is comparison with a strong professional. The quality of sound learning is the same the world over. Students taught physiology by the didactic method cannot meet this test.

Moved by these observations, I proposed in 1898 a new method of teaching physiology, and this method has been four years in use in the Harvard Medical School. In the new method, the fundamental experiments and observations which form the solid ground in every field of physiology are divided into sufficiently small groups and arranged in the most instructive sequence. With the fundamental experiment of each group are placed the accessory data. The meaning of this term will be clear from the following example. Consider the function of the roots of spinal nerves. The fundamental experiment here is Johannes Müller's

The accessory

well-known section and stimulation of the nerve-roots. data are such of the observations and opinions of his successors as are necessary to give a clear picture of the present state of knowledge of this subject. The Harvard student makes for himself the fundamental observation, and immediately afterward considers the accessory data provided in text-book and lecture. He proceeds systematically from the fundamental experiment and accessory data of one group to those of the next, in an ordered and logical series.

The fundamental experiment and the accessory data are taken as directly as possible from the original sources, and (for university students) the reference should be given in each case.

It will be obvious that the new method is not an extension of the old. It is, in fact, an exactly opposite process. The old method is chiefly didactic. The new is a systematic course of experiment and observation by the student himself. In the old the student rests on the professor and the text-book; in the new he relies on the fundamental experiments done with his own hands. In the old his experiments follow the lecture and attempt to verify its statements; in the new his experiments precede the lecture and are discussed by the lecturer in relation to the work of other observers. In the old the stress is upon the didactic teaching; in the new the stress is upon observation. Under the old method students in the Harvard Medical School used to ask: "Who is the authority for that statement?" Under the new they ask: "What is the experimental evidence?" The old method insensibly teaches men to depend upon authority, but the new directs them to nature.

It should be observed that this new method serves for the instruction of all students, from beginners to those engaged in research. The beginner performs the fundamental experiment in each group and studies the accessory data. The advanced student performs the fundamental experiments and as many of the accessory experiments as may give him the special training he desires. The research student has before him the classical observations, and the original sources of the problem he has chosen.

It should be noticed also that the new need not violently push aside the old method of instruction, but may replace it chapter by chapter, as the means and the energy of the instructors shall permit.

It has been urged against the new method that there are fundamental experiments which require more time than the student can possibly give, or which are too complicated to be successfully performed by him. The number of these has certainly been much exaggerated, and is daily lessened by inventions that secure simplicity without loss of accuracy. Pending such labor-saving inventions, the experiments which consume much time are done (in the Harvard Medical School) by committees of students, and the results reported to the entire class.