Lights and shadows of medical science : an address, delivered Feb. 27, 1872. / by Ezra M. Hunt.

  • Hunt, Ezra Mundy, 1830-1894.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lights and shadows of medical science : an address, delivered Feb. 27, 1872. / by Ezra M. Hunt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    If your attention has not been turned to it, you would be surprised to find the change which has taken place, among young men, in the grasp for medical knowledge, in our own country, within the last twenty years. A far greater number than formerly of the members of our best medical colleges have had a previous collegiate training, and although the study of medicine is very far more expensive than that of law or theology, yet, I am told, that not over one-third of those who graduate from this institution, for instance, go directly into private practice. Having expended one thousand or twelve hundred dollars more than has the theologian or lawyer in his preparation, they are willing to spend one, two or three years more before even seeking a locality. Besides the numbers who go to our own hospitals or to private infirmaries or spe- cialties, from fifty to sixty are to be found at Berlin or Vienna, and many more in some of the French or En- glish schools. Now this very fact is a noble warranty for the founding of an institution that shall deal only with graduates of medical colleges, admitting them to special courses, giving the highest advantages for pa- thological and physiological investigation, for the stu- dies of the laboratory and for all those departments which must necessarily be studied in this way before entering upon practice, if the highest skill will be secured. Hospitals, as at present constructed, are not suffi- cient for those purposes, and, while visitation and as- sociation with them is important as collateral to such a