Argument in favour of requiring every candidate for a degree in medicine to attend a course of clinical lectures on the practice of surgery / [James Russell].

  • Russell, James, 1754-1836
Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Argument in favour of requiring every candidate for a degree in medicine to attend a course of clinical lectures on the practice of surgery / [James Russell]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    approbation of those measures by honouring me with a very respectable attendance. During a twelve- month from this date, including both winter and summer sessions, between 170 and 180 Students have attended Clinical Surgery, much about the number who attended the Medical Clinical Lectures during the same period of time. The class, there¬ fore, is now in a very flourishing condition. And as its prosperity depends upon the intrinsic merit of the establishment, there is every encouragement to expect that it will continue to prosper so long as the University shall flourish, and Edinburgh be a dis¬ tinguished School of Medicine. Such being the state of the fact, I naturally ex¬ pected to receive the patronage and support of the Medical Faculty, to approve of including Clinical Surgery among the number of protected classes; but in these expectations I was completely disap¬ pointed, as the Members of the Medical Faculty una¬ nimously disapproved of the proposed arrangement. The arguments adduced by the Members of the Medical Faculty, in opposing my proposal, seem to me inaccurate and fallacious, as I shall now en¬ deavour to show. In the first place, however, I cannot omit this op¬ portunity of expressing my astonishment at the very slender provision which the Medical Faculty has made for the cultivation of surgical knowledge. The respect paid to Surgery in Foreign Universities is very different. At Paris, a Candidate for a degree in Medicine, has, during an attendance of four years, each year consisting of a winter and a summer ses¬ sion, to attend four courses of Surgery, besides a finishing course of* Clinical Surgery, to render his knowledge of practice as perfect as possible. Now,