On the application of the collegiate system to the Medical Schools of London.

  • University of London. Faculty of Medicine
Date:
[1842]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the application of the collegiate system to the Medical Schools of London. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ON THE APPLICATION OF THE COLLEGIATE SYSTEM TO THE JWeDtcal Schools! of Honion. Amid the loud and justifiable cries for medical reform with which the whole kingdom at present rings, it is both wholesome and desirable to receive the faithful warnings of a friend who calls upon us to look at home and to rectify evils which lie at our own door and concern us, as a profession, still more nearly. Into this category, unquestionably, must come those evils—great and manifold—which spring from the total deficiency of any system of collegiate discipline in our medical schools. The reform of these depends entirely, or for the most part, upon the conscientious sense of duty in the members of the pro¬ fession itself; they demand no parliamentary interference ; their removal will infringe the rights of no corporate bodies, while every step that shall be taken towards their correction will be in itself a positive good, a blessing conferred upon the rising members of the profession, and through them on the country at large. It is therefore with much satisfaction that we see the subject of col¬ legiate discipline again brought prominently forward,* and we are disposed to hope, from the notice which has been taken of it in all our medical journals, that a strong feeling in favour of the cause it advocates is already excited. Most assuredly the man will well deserve of the country who, by a well-devised plan of moral superintendence, shall enable the medical student to escape the multitude of temptations which surround him just at the most critical period of his life, and instruct him in the best mode of occupying his short and valuable period of hospital studies. We well know, from experience, the dismay with which the medical student looks around him upon the crowd of strangers who pass before him, on his first leaving the retirement of a country town for the busy mart of intellect in London. What would he not give to meet with some companion, sufficiently experienced, and sufficiently trustworthy to guide him in his choice of lectures, of books, of society? He looks at the list of lectures, of hospital attendances, of demonstrations, all of which he is required to attend, and comparing the space of time which he is to be allowed with the tasks to be performed in it, he is utterly at a loss and in despair. He has not yet learned to sift the essen¬ tial from the non-essential, and is ignorant of the processes whereby even the industrious student is obliged to lighten his labour, and by which the idler con¬ trives to discover the minimum of study required for his passing the pons asino- rum of the Hall and College examinations. He comes up to the schools, probably, with the most upright and conscientious intentions of learning his pro¬ fession, and of redeeming that time which has inevitably been too much wasted in a five years’ apprenticeship. He comes to the task in all the ardour of youth, with the most sanguine anticipations of success; but he is utterly bewildered and disheartened by the multiplicity of demands upon him. He looks around for some friendly hand to guide him in his difficulties, and the chance is at least an even one, that, deceived by an assured air of importance and pretension, he is led into society the very reverse of what is desirable for an inexperienced youth, and the influence of which may greatly prejudice and mar the whole progress of his future studies and of his future life. * A Letter to Sir B. Brodie, Bart., on the application of the Collegiate System to the Medical Schools of the Metropolis, by the Rev. J. H. North, m.a. Chaplain to St. George’s Hospital, London, 1841, 8vo, pp. 15.