Address at the opening of the Anatomical Department in the new medical buildings of the University of Edinburgh, delivered October 27th / by William Turner.

  • Turner, Wm. (William), Sir, 1832-1916.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address at the opening of the Anatomical Department in the new medical buildings of the University of Edinburgh, delivered October 27th / by William Turner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    methods of practice, and the more will our profession advance in the estimation of the public. But other causes than proximity to a great metro- polis and the influence of powerful medical corpora- tions tended to repress during the last century the develop- ment of medical schools in the two ancient English univer- sities. In them much longer than in Scotland did the idea prevail that their primary function was to train ecclesiastics. The system of each of these universities, which practically gave the control over the education, not to a body of professors, but into the hands of the fellows and tutors of the different colleges; the semi-monastic life, imposed on the resident fellows, so many of whom were required to enter into holy orders ; the valuable endow- ments attached to the different wealthy colleges conferred as prizes on those who entered the Church as a profession —all tended to keep the system of education in a particular groove, and to check its expansion. But, further, the imposition of a religious test, both on teacher and student; the necessity of having to reside in a college, with its attendant expenses; the absence, in England, of such a complete set of parochial schools as prevailed in Scotland, in which the child of the peasant could obtain the rudiments at least, and in many schools much more than the rudiments, of a training in classics and mathematics— excluded from the English universities a large body of the nation, and restricted their privileges to members of the Established Church and to the wealthier classes of the com- munity. There can be no doubt that the expense and other difficulties which beset the path of so many young English- men in obtainingauniversity training and degree in medicine