A letter to the provost of Oriel, on a scheme for making Oxford more accessible to medical students generally / from C.H. Pearson.

  • Pearson, Charles H. (Charles Henry), 1830-1894.
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to the provost of Oriel, on a scheme for making Oxford more accessible to medical students generally / from C.H. Pearson. 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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    equally with the hard-working. But a surgeon or physician must have attended lectures and worked in the laboratory, the dissecting room, and the wards of the hospital, during three years at least before he obtains his diploma. It is not pro- posed, and there is no desire, to abridge this period by the measures at present suggested. Now it is but a small number who have the patience to work steadily forward to a distant prospect. The difference between six and five years of study appears perhaps even greater than it is to a man who is working solely with a view to practical life. Probably we owe some of our ablest tutors and literary men to the reaction against excessive work, which has deterred those who were the highest classmen and prizemen in the uni- versity from recommencing as beginners in a new sphere of study. If there is any truth in this, it will be a double advantage to the majority of medical students, that their term of work should be a little shorter, and that practically they should have no occasion to think of reading for honours. The last question to be examined is one that con- cerns not so much the students as ourselves. It may fairly be asked, whether Oxford will gain by admitting a new, and in some respects a different element into the colleges. Some to whom I have spoken or written have expressed their fear that the privilege of dimin- ished residence, if granted to a few, wall be claimed by all. This I quite admit would be an enormous evil. But the restrictions proposed, in the present instance, at least, seem to me to remove all danger. The class to be benefitted is distinguished clearly and sharply from all other professional students: it is connected with