Memorization is only one part of learning, but is an integral part to long term storage of memory (hence the word root). Yes, you have to memorize a lot, but the goal is to have you remember the important parts of what you memorized. Unfortunately, if the clinically important parts of medicine are 20%, then you need to learn another 80%, that you'll forget, in order to make the 20% stick.
An analogy is the flight training that I'm doing right now. We probably won't ever normally fly manuvers at extememly slow speeds, yet we practice them almost every lesson. The goal is to become comfortable at landing speeds. When people start flying, it seems that the airplane will fall right out of the sky on final approach. By practing and learning manuvers that are even slower that landing, regularly, pretty soon landing feels normal.
Medical education is no different. No, you'll never have to know some of off-the-wall biochem pathways, but by learning the freaky ones, maybe glycolysis and the TCA cycle will become second nature, and you'll be able to at least grasp the concept of why you can't, for example, use fructose IV (would cause malilgnant hyperthermia). Though you might not remember exactly why, you could pick up a book, and relearn it almost instantly.
Howevery, I disagree with the people on here that think that memorization is all that's required.
If you attempt to just memorize anatomy, you aren't doing yourself nor your patients any favors.
Of course you can "learn" anatomy. If you understand it, it takes a significant burden off of the memorization requirement. The body isn't just a random throw-together of parts, it's put together like a well-built building, and by understanding the reasoning of why things are where they are (embryologically as well), it becomes much easier, and somewhat intuitive.
An example is the forearm musculature. It's an engineering marvel, and if you look at it that way, you'll be able to figure out why the hand movememts are as they are, beyond that of rote memorization.
