RT Journal
T1 VAn ’t hoff and medical science
JF JAMA
JO JAMA
YR 2011
FD March 16
VO 305
IS 11
SP 1145
OP 1145
DO 10.1001/jama.2011.218
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2011.218
AB 
If a refutation of these arguments were necessary there could be found no illustration better than that furnished by the entrance of physical chemistry into medical science. How many men who were taught chemistry in the average American medical school by the “practical teacher” two decades ago, or even half as long ago, were given the slightest inkling of the then theoretical subject of physical chemistry? We doubt that there were any—certainly they were few, and fortunate in that their teachers were less “practical” than they were supposed to be. Yet at this time the same graduates, in their best years, know that progress is being made behind what to them must remain a closed door, unless they have the time and the rare energy to go back and make up one of the many defects in their training, for which not they themselves but a faulty system of education is responsible. None of us can foretell what direction progress will take, and we know not which scrap of theory of to-day will be the foundation of our great advances a few years hence. The plant cells and salt solutions of de Vries and the semipermeable membranes of Traube, unknown to the medical teacher two decades ago, were then pointing out lines of investigation whose fruits are now being reaped by physiology and pathology, and prepared for the clinical medicine of the near future. Therefore we must teach our fundamental sciences as sciences, and provide our students with a grasp of principles which will enable them to understand the new developments in these sciences, rather than equip them with a catalogue of supposedly useful information which may be useless slag by the time their diplomas are framed.