Hints respecting the improvement of the literary & scientific education of candidates for the degree of Doctor of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh : humbly submitted to the consideration of the patrons and professors of that institution / by a graduate of King's College, Aberdeen.

Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hints respecting the improvement of the literary & scientific education of candidates for the degree of Doctor of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh : humbly submitted to the consideration of the patrons and professors of that institution / by a graduate of King's College, Aberdeen. 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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    With regard to the Professional Education of Medical Practitioners, it is unnecessary, I conceive, to employ any1 arguments to' convince you how much Society is in- terested in their possessing a thorough knowledge of all the different branches of Medicine, and consequently in the proper regulation of the Medical Schools in which this-knowledge must be acquired. “ The Practice of Medicine,” it has been observed,* “has long been nominally divided into two departments, Physic and Sur- gery. Physic is said to have for its object the treatment cff internal, Surgety that of external diseases; and each of these departments of the healing art has been supposed to be the peculiar province of a distinct and differently educated practitioner. But though this is a distinction which has been often recognised in the practice of the medical profession} it must be confessed that the limits between Physic and Surgery are not very precisely marked, and that the respective functions of the Physician and Surgeon, long as those names have ex- isted, are still hut very inaccurately defined. The most superficial acquaintance with the symptoms, progress and termination of the various morbid affections to whith the human body is liable, must be sufficient to convince every unprejudiced inquirer, that there is hut a slight foundation, if indeed there be any, for this dis- tinction, in the nature of the diseases which these prac- titioners are required to treat} or in the modes of treat- ment by which the diseases themselves maybe cured or relieved. Experience has long shewn, not only that the U9te of internal remedies is-required in a large pro- • Lectures on Inflammation, by Dr Thomson-