Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Contributions to Practical Physiology and Pharmacology
By providing the student with simple, efficient and sturdy appa ratus designed especially to meet the requirements of the courses, I believe much time now devoted to the purely mechanical side of the experimental work may be saved, thereby enabling him to perform more experiments in the allotted time. Also, his results will be more certain and accurate, and being less burdened with mechanical details, his mind will be freer to contemplate the physiological or pharmaco logical phenomena revealed during the time of the experiment, a point I would strongly emphasize. Finally, I believe that under such condi tions the courses would have larger pedagogic values.
The View has been held that by assembling, adapting and devising all of the separate pieces of apparatus for each experiment the student gains valuable practical training, both manual and technical. I believe the value of this feature of such courses has been overestimated in the past; and with modern preliminary requirements for medical students, I see no reason why the Physiologist or Pharmacologist should deem it a part of his duty to teach manual training or elementary physics. Only a very small percentage of such students become teachers or investi gators in these fields, and the course with time-saving apparatus is not less stimulating - in fact, it is more so.
From a purely technical standpoint, physiology has not kept abreast of her sister science physics, save in certain special fields. Even in muscle-nerve physiology there is no uniformity of methods in different laboratories. In general, the student is obliged to adapt apparatus to particular ends. Therefore, results are secured at the expense of much time, and the results themselves are prone to be inaccurate. The mechanical errors are great and imperfectly known, since for the most part such apparatus is not standardized. Also, time and the limita tions of the apparatus render study of the finer and more ultimate phenomena impracticable. Pedagogically, for the time expended, the result is unsatisfactory.
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