The influence of human progress on medical education. An introductory lecture delivered at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley, on commencing the twenty-fourth session of the Army Medical School, April 1, 1872.

  • Aitken, William, 1825-1892.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The influence of human progress on medical education. An introductory lecture delivered at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley, on commencing the twenty-fourth session of the Army Medical School, April 1, 1872. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    the session, to introduce the candidates to the nature of their duties, and to tell them of the high official trust and grave respon- sibilities which it will be their privilege to assume and their duty to discharge. But I do not now mean to trespass in these respects on the province of my colleagues, who will severally, as they meet you, introduce you to your respective duties, and define the special work you will be required to do here. I would rather engage your attention with a subject which I hope may be congenial to our first meeting together. Casting about for some such topic, I have thought it might not be without interest if I attempt to contrast the past with the pre- sent, so as to unfold the social conditions which have contributed to improve the education of medical men, and to advance the Science of Medicine,—conditions which will continue to demand and to exact of our profession still greater general and scientific acquirements; or, more briefly stated, I would consider “ the influ- ence of Human Progress on Medical Education.” Looking to the methods of instruction that have prevailed in our science, there are at least three which may be regarded as each characteristic of different periods of time. During the earliest period, the medical man was believed to be born a doctor. He was looked upon as a congenital physician—a physician by here- ditary transmission. Hippoci’ates is an example. He is described as the seventeenth or nineteenth in lineal succession from iEscula- pius, the reputed founder of the Science of Medicine. But the most recent instance of such a type of doctor is one whom Lady Mary Wortley Montague describes in her “Letters from Italy’’ and who attended her in a dangerous illness. Of him she writes, “ that he will not employ a surgeon or an apothecary. He per- forms surgical operations with great dexterity; and whatever compounds he gives, he makes in his own house, which are very few, the juice of herbs and water being commonly his sole prescriptions. He has very little learning, and professes to draw all his knowledge from experience, which he possesses perhaps in a greater degree than any other mortal, being the seventh^ doctor of his family in a direct line. His forefathers have all left journals and registers, solely for the use of their posterity, none of them having ever published anything; and he has recourse