Letter to the Right Honourable Sir James Spittal, Lord Provost, to the magistrates and Town-Council of Edinburgh, on the expediency of continuing the Chair of Pathology in the University of Edinburgh / by Robert Lewins.

  • Lewins, Robert.
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letter to the Right Honourable Sir James Spittal, Lord Provost, to the magistrates and Town-Council of Edinburgh, on the expediency of continuing the Chair of Pathology in the University of Edinburgh / by Robert Lewins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    It is not immaterial to notice, with reference to the difficulty with which the most important improvements can be introduced, and to the contrast which may subsist be- tween the opinions entertained, it may be said, by the whole profession of medicine, and the opinions of the teachers in the University themselves, that it is only within the last six years that attendance upon the class of midwifery was required by candidates for the medical degree in the Uni- versity of Edinburgh, although that class had been included for some time in the curriculum of study in the University of Glasgow. Whether midwifery may be actually prac- tised or not by the physician in after life, it is fully ad- mitted by all, and now acknowledged by the University of Edinburgh, that an acquaintance with the subject, and with the great variety of complaints included under the head of midwifery, as well as with the treatment both of the female and the infant, is of essential importance in the education of those who are to practise medicine. The exclusion of this class from the medical curricu- lum in the University of Edinburgh for so long a period, appears to us to be the more extraordinary, because it has been strongly and anxiously stated by the Medical Faculty, in opposition to many of the changes which we have pro- posed in the education of the candidates for the medical degree, that the degree of M. D. is and ought to be what is termed the working degree thoughout the country, or, in other words, should be possessed by the great bulk of practitioners. Upon that principle, the exclusion of the class of midwifery appears to have been wholly at variance with the very objects for which the system of instruction is said to be designed. The last extract to which I shall direct your attention is to be found at page 57. Taking, at the same time, a more general view of the subject, it has appeared to us, that unless a man has passed through a course of education, embracing in some reason- able degree all these departments of knowledge, there can be no security that he possesses the enlargement of under- standing which is alike necessary to guard him against rashness of speculation in practice, and to preserve the correctness and delicacy of personal conduct which the