On medical education at Cambridge / by Michael Foster.

  • Michael Foster
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On medical education at Cambridge / by Michael Foster. 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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    be unsafe to go. In some instances the lad of twenty or even beyond is still malleable and ductile; in other instances, again, whatever of character has to be formed, must be formed by eighteen years or even earlier. But these are exceptional cases: the vast majority of lads are at nineteen years of age still capable of being moulded by proper care; indeed, the three years from nineteen to twenty-two are perhaps the most directive of a man's whole life. Taking nineteen years as on the whole a satisfactory limit, the problem still further reduces itself to the question, Is it possible so to arrange the studies of the University that a lad may be prepared to enter upon his clinical studies at nineteen years of age? It, I believe, might be done by adopting the following plan. In the first place, the student must enter the University at sixteen years of age, already prepared by his school-teaching to pass satisfactorily the Previous Examination with the additional subjects. I know there are many who are opposed to so early an entrance into the University, but 1 have never heard any arguments against such a practice which were at all conclusive; and I have yet to learn that collegiate life at Cambridge, Avhether from a moral or from an educational point of view, is less suited to a youth of sixteen than life in one of our public or private schools. On the contrary, as far as I can learn, nine out of ten lads of that age would be infinitely better for the change. It would lead me too far away from my immediate purpose to discuss this matter more fully here; but I venture to think that the onus probandi lies with those who believe that the older practice of the University was essentially wrong, and that the modern state of things, which is the result of an undesirable system of competition, is in itself good1. It is obvious moreover that the medical profession is not the only calling which demands an earlier entrance into the University than at present obtains. Nor is there anything exorbitant in 1 One is struck in reading the lives of eminent men from Milton down to Arnold, with the fact that they entered the University quite early in life; thus even Arnold was not sixteen when he joined Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Of course these may have heen exceptions; that they were not is rendered probable by the nature of the macliinery of discipline which lias been handed down from old times, and which is certainly moro adapted to boys than
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