Some observations on medical education / by Andrew Wood.

Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some observations on medical education / by Andrew Wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    19/24 (page 17)
    schools, would you not hj sucli a system be actually holding out temptations to them with the view of attracting students, to exercise the power with undue lenity: a course which might please the student, but be unsafe for the public ? On the other hand, woUld the student have a sufficient guarantee in such a system against a capricious and puzzling rather than a fair system of testing ? Were the system desirable, which, I think, it is not, it might possibly be practicable in its working were students to take their whole course, which they seldom do, in one school and under one set of teachers; but how can it be worked in the case of that vast majority of students who take their course at different schools, and under different teachers ? Where are you to get assessors to be associated with the teachers, who are a numerous body ? and how are you to remunerate them for the enormous labour which will be thrown upon them ? and how are you to exercise a general control over the multiplicity of detached examinations which you thus propose to hold ? What great object, after all, it may be asked, are you to gain, sufficient to induce you to try this experiment—for such even Pro- fessor Syme must, I think, admit it to be—which infers a complete bouleversement of a system under which the status of medical men has been steadily, and in a marked manner, raised ? You say that the present system of examination is very irksome to the student, and that it interferes with that due attention to practical studies which is so necessary, and thus mars in great measure the very object of the test you apply. But is there not a fear that the applying of so sweeping a remedy, in order to relieve the student, may be fraught with danger to the public, whose safety ought to be with you the suprema lex ? Are there not safer remedies within your reach more in consonance with the milder practice of the age, than one so violent as tlie virtual superseding to a considerable extent, for to this it amounts, of board-examinations ? I have endeavoured to show that your object may be fully attained, more safely attained, by re- arrangement and modification of the cun'iculum of study and re- adjustment of the tests; and that this can be done without such violent change of machinery as is proposed by those who have ini- tiated this new movement. I have shown, I trust, how this can be done with the effect of proving a boon to tlie student, at the same time that it preserves inviolate the functions of the licensing boards and thus, as I believe, best guarantees tlie safety of the public. Let me briefly recapitulate the view I have presented. Make the preliminary studies and examinations in truth preliminary • for this purpose raise the age of commencing strictly professional study