American versus European medical education : a comparison of American medical college work with that of European medical schools, including some thoughts on free trade in medical diplomas of foreign manufacture / by Samuel O.L. Potter.

  • Potter, Samuel O. L. (Samuel Otway Lewis), 1846-1914.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: American versus European medical education : a comparison of American medical college work with that of European medical schools, including some thoughts on free trade in medical diplomas of foreign manufacture / by Samuel O.L. Potter. 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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    IO of study required of candidates, with other equally indefinite requirements:—and that the quality of their final examinations is just as much an un- known quantity as it is in any other country. British Medical Education is based upon a much higher standard than that of Germany in respect of the guarantees it gives of the posses- sion of definite qualifications. A British degree or other ‘1 qualification ’ ’ in medicine means that its owner is a man of a certain definite general education, who has received a strictly specified amount of medical training, gone through a cer- tain amount of medical study, and passed exami- nations as searching as it is possible for examina- tions to be. Our evidence for this assertion is three-fold. In the first place the British government accepts the British college diploma as evidence of profes- sional fitness, and makes it its business to see that the diploma has this value. In the second place, the candidate for a diploma is not exam- ined therefor by the men who have taught him, but by a different set of Examiners, who know him only by a number : the Royal Colleges hav- ing no teaching powers, and the teaching schools having no power to grant diplomas of any kind. The college examinations in England, therefore, occupy the same place as the German State Ex- aminations ; but, being in the accredited position they are, their diplomas mean something; and the anomaly is avoided of having Doctors of Medicine who are not entitled to practice their profession under the laws of the very country which conferred on them the degree of M.D. through its chartered agent, the University. In the third place, a British medical student is surrounded by definite rules at every step of his course. He must register under the law the fact