On medical education: being a lecture delivered at King's College, London, at the opening of the medical session 1846-7; to which is added, a lecture delivered on the same occasion in the year 1842 / By William Augustus Guy.

  • Guy, William A. (William Augustus), 1810-1885.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On medical education: being a lecture delivered at King's College, London, at the opening of the medical session 1846-7; to which is added, a lecture delivered on the same occasion in the year 1842 / By William Augustus Guy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/64 (page 17)
    large number of our pupils. On referring to the Calendar recently published, I find that no less than twenty-eight of these distinctions were conferred on nineteen students, at the end of the last Winter Session; and this number will be increased at the next distribution by additional prizes and certificates of honour in physiology, surgery, medicine, and midwifery, to which I may add, prizes for proficiency in chemical manipulation, and in the medical and surgical studies of the hospital. I have already mentioned, as of recent establishment, the Daniell Scholarship, founded to give encouragement to the higher order of attainments in practical chemistry. But though the system of prizes and endowments has a salutary effect in stimulating and sustaining the industry of the student, and though its influence is felt by a large num¬ ber of our pupils, it would not be safe or desirable to trust to a system of reward and competition as the chief or only engine by which to move the sluggish and fix the wavering. Such a system, from its very nature, must be partial in its operation. The majority of all bodies of young men is inac¬ cessible to the action of these moral stimulants. The diffi¬ dent, the slow of apprehension, and the infirm of purpose, either keep altogether aloof from competition, or abandon it long before the day of trial. They require to be guided and assisted in the laborious career into which the more ambiti¬ ous and enterprising are attracted by the prospect of distinc¬ tion and reward—a prospect which must be regarded, in any case, as a secondary inducement, and which ought not to be allowed to usurp the place of a sense of duty and obligation. It is this sense of duty, strengthened by a consideration of the responsible nature of the profession which he has em¬ braced, that can alone preserve the medical student, whatever his character or capacity, from the temptations to idleness and negligence, which, if he yield to them, will soon be followed by assaults still more difficult to resist, and still more fatal to his present welfare and future prospects. I am not of the number of those who view with peculiar alarm the student's residence in London. I believe the fears B