Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 2.djvu/441

Rh It is curious to see the race between sin and science: how the tests of the chemist even more than keep up with the craft of the murderer. Some of our most celebrated poisons are of comparatively recent date. Prussic acid was discovered, not so very many years ago, by Scheele—though poisoning by cherry-laurel was a well-known process; and the late Mr. Palmer, of Rugeley, first brought strychnine into such felonious popularity. The toxicologists can count up their martyrs to science. It is curious to observe how each advancing wave of time blots out the records of crime. The crime that was a national event becomes a tradition—is lost in a black abyss of forgetfulness. There, so far as we are concerned, let such traditions rest.

We come back, however, to the point of departure whence we digressed. The culture of the medical man is also combined with a very large experience of life in its broadest bearings and its intensest moments. The education, instead of being confined to a single school, has very commonly been carried on at several great medical centres. Travel is more than ever becoming one of the marks of a highly-trained medical man. There is a period of leisure for nearly every medical man, which, rightly used, may be one of unspeakable preciousness and importance for him. This is the time that lies between the call to a profession and the obtaining any large share of work. As a rule, all preparatory studies have not done more than to break up the ground, and prepare it for the fertilizing process. The real work is to be done when the mind is released from tutors and governors, and can concentrate itself on the thought and work of maturer years. Travel is the opportunity that best enables a man to combine study, thought, and observation. It is astonishing what a large and increasing space is occupied in medical life by travel. It is now not at all uncommon for English medical students to spend a great deal of time at the medical schools of Paris and Vienna. They generally prefer Paris to Vienna, and London to either. The best medical men more than ever seem to be familiarized with the scientific medical thought of Germany. The custom of going out as medical officer to vessels is very largely on the increase. Many young men go with the steamers that traverse the regular ocean thoroughfares. Men who have risen to, or descended from, eminence have been glad to take positions on the great lines of steamers. They are found a most agreeable addition to all the social arrangements—with the drawback, however, of being obliged to subsist in a chronic state of flirtation. Others take longer voyages, and, generally speaking, seek a more adventurous line of life. Thus there are, among men I have known, those who have gone to the Greenland seas, round Cape Horn, to Australia, to India, and the Pacific islands, and have gone, again and again, induced by the divine passion for knowledge and travel. There would be many competitors for the place of medical officer to travel with some of the expeditions that nowadays go round the world. What such travel might be can be