Observations on the preparatory education of candidates for the degree of Doctor of Medicine, in the Scottish universities ...

Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the preparatory education of candidates for the degree of Doctor of Medicine, in the Scottish universities ... Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    the Curriculum, can consent to impose the Study of Che- mistry and Botany on the Medical candidate, without includ- ing also the other branches of Natural Philosophy and Na- tural History, equally important for him to know. Dyna- mics, Pneumatics, Hydrostatics, Optics, Acoustics, Meteo- rology, and other branches of physics, are surely as indis- pensable to the right investigation of the structure and functions of the animal economy, as Chemistry can be ; and Zoology, Mineralogy, Hydrology, and other divisions of the course of Natural History, are as intimately connected with Medicine and Materia Medica as is Botany ; so that no good reason can, I apprehend, be assigned for continu- ing to consider a knowledge of Chemistry and of Botany essentially important to the Physician, which does not equal- ly, if not a fortiori, apply to the other branches of Natural Philosophy and Natural History. Chemistry and Botany are no more medical sciencies than they ; though Anatomy, Physiology, Pathology, Therapeutics, Pharmacy, and Ma- teria Medica, can neither be adequately taught, nor proper- ly apprehended, without a knowledge of all of them.'” How little the qualifications required, by the present Curriculum, of young men entering on the Study of Me- dicine correspond with those which were considered to be necessary, by the person who had the honour to be ap- pointed by the Town Council in March 1685, the first Professor of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh, and who had a principal share in founding the Royal Col- u