Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/75

Rh are published in Italian, and to a less extent in Spanish and other modern European languages, they are not so numerous as to justify a study of these languages. Latin is required for admission to certain medical schools, "in order to enable the student the more rapidly to master scientific and medical nomenclature." The international anatomical nomenclature is now entirely Latin and many of its terms are employed as English words. It is, therefore, very desirable that a student of medicine should have studied Latin as a part of his preparation for college. Greek is of much less importance, although it has supplied many barbarous medical terms.

English.—Although some students believe that in an examination in anatomy they should be marked upon anatomy alone, and not upon English, this is impossible. Every examiner, as well as every intelligent patient, will judge of the physician, in part at least, by his manner of expression. In a lot of examination books which had been marked in the usual way, there were a few with the grade A, and in none of these was there an example of strikingly bad English. The first book of low grade (60 per cent.) which was taken up, contained the following statement:

It is useless to assert that clear and well-ordered anatomical knowledge exists in a mind which can not express it.

The study of English literature in college is to be recommended not only for its utilitarian value, but as a source of recreation and diversion from specialized scientific studies. There may be a few medical students who need the advice which Holmes gave to the young practitioner: "Do not linger by the enchanted streams of literature," but many more should heed the warning—"Do not let your literary life become a memory—a reminiscence." Unfortunately there are those who enter medicine with nothing on which to found a literary reminiscence.

Drawing.—The principles of drawing are taught in connection with courses in the fine arts or in architecture. Accuracy of observation may be developed in such courses, for no sooner does one begin to draw or model an object than attention is called to many details otherwise overlooked. For this reason drawing is required in studying anatomy, especially microscopic anatomy, in certain medical schools; and inability to draw seems to many students a justification for deficiencies in these subjects. To be sure, their professors are often in a similar predicament: Ruskin says: