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

  • Charles Henry Pearson
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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    regular medical practitioners in England and Wales exceeds 10,000. The number of medical degrees con- ferred at Oxford has scarcely averaged more than two a year in the last five-and-twenty years. The number of medical men who graduate at Cambridge, is, I believe, larger than this, but not to such an extent as materially to affect the conclusion, that in no liberal department of life are the two universities less repre- sented than in the medical profession, I must assume as the basis of my argument, that a liberal education in itself is an advantage rather than a drawback to a pro- fessional man. The question why medical students do not endeavour to obtain the undoubted social prestige of an Oxford degree seems to me, then, to demand exa- mination under three heads: Is the education given at Oxford of such a kind as to benefit them] Or can they obtain one equally good at other places ] Or is the expense of university residence the great ob- stacle to their profiting by it ] I. The mere fact that I am most anxious to send medical students to Oxford proves, I hope, that I consider the education given there in itself good for them. I believe, most medical men are on the whole of the same opinion. But accidental circum- stances have seriously impaired among the medical profession the real value of an Oxford degree, as a test of merit. During the last ten years at least Oxford has never practically been a medical school. This arose partly from causes which have now been remedied; from the want of an organized system of scientific teaching, of a university museum and la- boratory, and because anatomy, chemistry, and botany, were not recognized in the university class list, or