Two lectures : I. Lectures, books, and practical teaching ; II. Clinical instruction / by W.T. Gairdner.

Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Two lectures : I. Lectures, books, and practical teaching ; II. Clinical instruction / by W.T. Gairdner. 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.

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    LECTURES, BOOKS, AND PRACTICAL TEACHING; BEING AN INTRODUCTORY LECTURE TO A COURSE OP PRACTICE OF MEDICINE, 1S77-VS. A QUESTION which has been of late a good deal discussed in medical councils and societies has been this—Whether lectures, as compared with books on the one hand, and strictly practical studies on the other, have not been allowed to assume a too prominent position in medical education ? Or perhaps it would be a more correct way of representing the views of some persons to sa}''—Whether lectures (i.e., oral instruction ex cathedra) be not an exploded and effete system, soon to be elbowed out, or displaced entirely, by the other methods just named ? As one holding a commission to teach by lectures in this University a subject of the widest range, and of the most far-reaching practical importance to all of you; as one, more- over, who has for fully a quarter of a century had this problem constantly presented to his mind amid all the changing lights of experience, and amid the actual necessities arising out of the teaching of large classes of students—not one of which many and varied groups of pupils has at any time appeared at all unwilling to be so taught—I have thought that it might be not uninteresting to you, and certainly not unbecoming in me, to anticipate our course of instruction in the present session by a few words on. this matter, and to point out its beai^ing on the