laugh has taught me how I will to-morrow make them weep.' Nearly all of us have been cured of some trick or taught some truth in a similar way, and the silent education is always being carried on by the bond which connects us in some mysterious way with the awe-inspiring aggregate of human souls that make up an audience.

Besides the rehearsal class and practice on the stage, our school, or, if you prefer it, our theatre would give lessons at reasonable rates in elocution, elementary singing, fencing, calisthenics, dancing, deportment and gesture-studies, be it observed, that in the old stock days were deemed indispensable. Edmund Kean, for example, was a most accomplished fencer. Only the other day I came across an old gentleman whose father, when quartered in Ireland, had with other officers of his regiment taken a series of fencing lessons from the great actor, then in his period of poverty and hardship. All possible opportunities of athletic exercise would be offered-supplemented doubtless by recreation at the rifle-butts and the drill-ground-in order to keep fit and disciplined the fair mind in the fair body. Then there would be lectures on sword-play, costume, and general subjects connected with the dramatic and the sister arts; expeditions to museums and art galleries, to study expression, pose, and grouping. The chaff of the fellow-student and the rough handling at rehearsals might be trusted to counteract the dangers of too much self-improvement.

Such a theatre might become a school alike for actors, audience, and authors. It would do much to embody and maintain the high traditions of the English stage coming down from Garrick, the Kembles, the Keans, Macready, Phelps, and Calvert, and in our own days so worthily upheld by Sir Henry Irving.

Surely there is room for such an establishment-subventioned if needs be by a syndicate or an individual, either by guarantee or subsidy-in one or more of our big cities. The time is ripe for it. It has been written about for years, and recently not only by Mr. Jones, but by Messrs. Archer, Sidney Lee, and others. Possessing the most wonderful and the most national dramatist, it is somewhat a reflection on our methods that there is but one theatre in his own country-namely, that at Stratford-on-Avon, erected chiefly by the exertions of the late Mr. Charles Flower-that is able permanently to set itself to produce his works apart from considerations of

revenue.

There is no reason, however, why such an experiment should be unremunerative, given time, prudence, and wise administration. If it were desirable, it might soon become independent of subvention; only it must not try to realise all its ideals at first, but must be content from small beginnings to grow steadily and sanely.

It may not come to-day, but it will to-morrow, with spread of

libraries, swimming-baths, and picture-galleries, as part of our reawakened civic responsibility and municipal development.

When it does come, such theatre will once more become one of the centres of the nation's life, reflecting and ennobling its sorrow, its joy, its hope. In the words of Sir Philip Sidney, its chief aim will be to give to the people pleasure that shall be noble pleasure.

Its work will not be forced on the public as part of a hard-andfast scheme of education, but it will seek rather to attract by its loveliness and truth.

Its watchword in this twentieth century will be that of King Alfred in the tenth-Service is Power,'

FRANK R. BENSON.

RELATIONSHIP OF HOSPITALS TO

MEDICAL SCHOOLS

THE article by Mr. Burford Rawlings in the last number of this Review, entitled 'Doctors in Hospitals,' commences by alluding to the friction which often occurs between the managers of these institutions and the medical staff. He then takes for his text the proposition that there are always two conflicting influences present, the philanthropic and the professional,' and this he more fully expounds in his essay. If he intends to place philanthropic governors on the one side and professional men on the other as opposing forces, he makes a statement which is absolutely erroneous. It is true that friction has often occurred between the two bodies, of the governors on the one hand and the medical men on the other; nevertheless, this is capable of being removed, enabling them to work smoothly together, as I shall presently show. It is, however, a fact that there are certain persons of a peculiar temperament who have a most intense hatred towards all forms of scientific thought. This antipathy seems to be inherent in the constitution and cannot be overcome. It has been truly said that men are born Platonists or Aristotelians, and when this is markedly the case this rancour is explained.

It is impossible to overlook the remark that the doctors are not actuated by the same feelings towards the public as any other class of the community. This is only asserting over again a vulgar error; it must imply much ignorance of any writer who has not heard of the Babingtons, Gregories, and Alisons, all hospital doctors, and equally known as eminent philanthropists, spending their time and money amongst the poor in the lowest quarters of the cities where they lived. When I regard Mr. Rawlings' statement personally, I can state unostentatiously—and in this many other hospital physicians will join me— that I have spent the best hours of a long life, my utmost energies and my most anxious thoughts, for the benefit of a large hospital. This has brought me, no doubt, a moderate livelihood (large incomes are the rare exceptions); but when I am told that I have done all this for sordid motives, no words would be too strong to express my indigna

tion, but I will be content with saying that the character which the writer has given to hospital doctors is cruelly false. All his denunciations are of a like nature; many so absurd and extravagant that it would be a waste of time to dilate upon them respectively. I am sure he will find but little sympathy with the majority of hospital governors in what he has said, although he may gain some little éclat with a small anti-scientific clique.

The friction in the hospitals in the past has been mainly due to the fact that many governors have hitherto had only one simple object before them, one founded on a limited benevolent feeling— the welfare of the individual patient; in this the medical officers have fully sympathised, but they have realised something more: they have felt a scientific interest in the case, as it was their nature and calling to do, being eager to add to the knowledge which might be of benefit to others. They have been thankful to the governors for giving them the great and unique opportunity of doing good work in the hospitals; but if any of the staff required further instruments or means of research, a difference between them and the governors at once arose. These novelties were not in the eyes of the latter of any value to the inmates, and would involve extra expense. In this way most of the friction has occurred. In the course of years, however, many intelligent governors have seen that they ought to be on a level with the times and assist in the advancement of the knowledge which was rapidly proceeding; that laryngoscopes and ophthalmoscopes were not mere playthings, and that the discovery of bacteria in many forms of disease was not merely one of scientific interest to the doctors; consequently, that all these new methods of inquiry should be placed in the hands of the medical officers; and, more than this, some governors saw that the institute which they ruled would become of great use to others besides the inmates, and therefore they had a duty to the community at large. In this way the governors of many large hospitals have allied themselves with the medical staff, and they now live in the greatest harmony. It would be a dreadful consideration if it were impossible for this to be the case, and the philanthropic governor and the doctor to have such opposing aims that they never could work together.

The article touches upon a large number of questions relating to most important matters with respect to the duties of the medical staff and governors, as well as the true functions of a public hospital.

In looking back over the last half-century, during which time I have been associated with several institutions, I know that many of these questions have never ceased to be burning ones nearly up to the present time; but I have lived long enough to have seen most of them amicably settled; to have seen governors and the medical men join hands and now work together for the common good. There

must, indeed, be something nowadays very wrong in the administration of a hospital where the governors and medical staff are in chronic discord.

Some allusion to controversies elsewhere in which I have taken part may be of use to the public on the present occasion. These have been greatest and most accentuated in those hospitals where medical schools are attached, as they necessarily furnish more numerous points of friction between the two bodies. In former times a hospital was administered in a perfectly independent manner by its governors, and the school connected with it was allowed to exist on sufferance, or sometimes even looked upon as a necessary evil. The governors had complete control over both sides of the institution, appointing lecturers to the school as well as medical officers to the hospital. The evils of the system were formerly seen in its tendency to abuse in consequence of the administration being put into the hands of one governor or treasurer, who then acted as a despotic monarch. He made use too often of family influences and his own natural ties in the creation of doctors, chaplain, nurses, and every other subordinate. All this has now happily disappeared. It has now been generally recognised that the governors, the medical staff, and the teachers in the attached school have only one interest common to them all. I have every reason to believe that the two sides of most medical institutions are now working together in the utmost harmony. As showing how inseparably the hospital and school are united, there is never a new development of the former without its being useful to the latter; and on the contrary, which is a very striking fact, many additions which were found absolutely necessary for teaching purposes have become some of the most important adjuncts to the hospital and of the greatest service to the public. I may mention the different lying-in charities formed, in the first place, as a necessity for the student's instruction; with the same object have been introduced departments for diseases of the skin, for dental surgery, for ophthalmic surgery, and several others, all of which have turned out to be of the utmost utility to the public. There are now to be found plenty of experienced governors who will openly aver that, so far from the hospital and school having opposite aims, whatever is useful for the one has been of benefit to the other.

It will not, however, be amiss to refer to some of the points of contention which formerly occurred, as they might crop up again in some other form. Some of these were real matters of conviction, others turned upon pecuniary considerations. In former times the governors were content to administer a hospital as they would do a workhouse or an asylum, thinking only of the comforts of the inmates.

There might be a necessity for admitting students to the wards