Report on a mission to Paris in October, 1889, to attend the 4th session of the French Surgical Congress : together with observations on the military medical schools of France / by Sir T. Longmore.

  • Longmore, Sir Thomas, 1816-1895.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on a mission to Paris in October, 1889, to attend the 4th session of the French Surgical Congress : together with observations on the military medical schools of France / by Sir T. Longmore. 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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    which was now in operation at the Val-de-Graee, subject only to an entrance examination of fitness, and at this school they went through the courses of instruction in the applications of their professional knowledge to the special conditions of military service. After the war of 1870-71, and the loss by France of Strasburg, Ohangeaaftor the system of education just described was subjected to some 187^71 modifications. Partly in consequence of the great expenses which the Strasburg school had entailed, and partly owing to difficulties due to insufficient means of instruction in certain branches of tuition at the Faculty of .Medicine for so large a number of pupils—the military pupils amounting at one time to 350, and the civil pupils being at least equal in number—a resolution was come to that the system of collecting all the military medical pupils in a single locality should not again be adopted. Before making fresh arrangements, however, in this direction, another trial was instituted, but still unsuccessfully, to obtain candidates for army practice from qualified doctors of medicine in civil life. It is recorded by M. Leon Le Fort in his work, entitled La Chirurgie Militaire et Les Societes de Secours en France et a 1'etranger (Paris, 1872, p. 45), that not long after the loss of Strasburg and its school, the French Government tried to fill up some of the vacancies in the ranks of the Medical Corps by reverting to the mode of recruiting adopted in the decree of 1852, that is, by offering the vacant appointments to those who had obtained their doctor's degree by their private resources. The 5th of January, 1872. was fixed for the competition, and 50 appointments were offered, but only two doctors in medicine appeared as candidates for them. Various reasons are assigned by M. Le Fort for this failure to attract competitors among this class of French qualified medical practitioners. The attempt to enlist medical recruits for the army by these means having proved unsuccessful, and a resolution having been formed, as before mentioned, not to re-establish a single military medical school like the one which had been at Strasburg, a Decrees of fresh system was adopted. It was ordained that military 1379,1880. medical pupils should be accepted as before, but that they should be distributed between 11 of the chief cities of France, each of which contained a Faculty of Medicine and a sufficiently large garrison hospital. The decrees ordering these arrange- ments were promulgated in the years 1879 and 1880. Paris was included among the 11 cities named in the decrees. It was left to the pupils to select, according to their convenience or choice, the place of study they preferred. This system was only maintained for about three years, when, Mil. Med. for various reasons, a change was introduced in October, I880, ^ch°c°ls :| and a plan embracing a more limited distribution of the pupils Bordeaux was adopted in its stead. Two special preparatory military 1883. medical schools were instituted, one at Nancy, and one at Bordeaux. These provincial towns, though remote from one another, were said to offer certain facilities of access to students