On medical education at Cambridge / by Michael Foster.

  • Foster, M. (Michael), Sir, 1836-1907.
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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    qualities such as these come, it is true, by nature and cannot be made by art; but it is equally true that they may be either encouraged or depressed, and that to a very large extent, by suitable opportunity and training. Not the chief but still a large part of the power which a doctor acquires over a patient is dependent on the possession of qualities which are frequently spoken of as good manners or good address, and these are proverbially just such qualities as may be largely increased or even be created by cultivation. A doctor who desires to have a firm grasp of, to secure the full confidence of his patients must learn to become all things to all men, he must know with whom to smile and with whom to be grave, whom to cheer and whom to frighten. This art no one can teach him; he must learn it by himself, he must learn it in the world, and he will never learn it at all unless he possess a natural facility; but his progress will be all the more rapid if he starts with the advantage of a good address, and the habits of a cultivated gentleman. The preparation of a doctor then runs in two lines more or less antagonistic. Viewed as a scientific engine, it is good for him to be thrust early into the specific training of his profession; on the other hand, in prospect of the future social demands which will be made upon him, he ought even in early youth to mix largely with the world. The one will form and sharpen his intellectual and corporeal faculties after the desired fashion but will tend to make him narrow, and even rude; the other will equip him with the requisite manners, at the expense of his more strictly professional ability. And one important problem of medical education is how to combine and harmonize these conflicting influences. Starting from these general considerations I may now go on to inquire into the nature and effects of the medical teaching at Cambridge. And first let me briefly state what is the extent of the apparatus for medical teaching at present existing. Putting aside the purely preliminary studies of Physics, Chemistry, Botany and Comparative Anatomy, there are, in the introductory subjects of Anatomy and Physiology, the lectures on