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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    are doing. For example, in the preface to the book already cited, Dr. Hardwicke says: “In some of the States of the Union there exist a great number of first-class and highly respectable Universities and Medical Colleges, capable of af- fording as good and sound an education as can be obtained in Europe. Harvard, Pennsylvania, New York, Bellevue and Jefferson, are names honored as much in Europe as in America.” Unfortunately, however, there are many instan- ces of a less fair spirit among English medical writers. The following is a recent and most glar- ing instance : “AMERICAN DEGREES. “ Having written a reliable friend in the United States of America for information respecting a certain American Degree, he kindly writes (October io, 1889) “The en- closed bears on your enquiry.” The following is the enclosure from the Kansas City Daily Star of October 2, 1889: “Degrees are acquired in the United States with alarm- ing facility. The North American Review for October contains a very instructive, if somewhat alarming article by Drs. Eggleston, Flint and Doremus, in which, under the title ‘ The Doors Open to Quackery,’ the writers dis- cuss the present methods by which professors of the art of healing are manufactured in America, and turned loose upon a luckless community. Dr. Eggleston says that there are 1 not a dozen American medical colleges out of 117 that would be tolerated for a moment in any country that pretends to be civilized;’ and this, despite the efforts of the best men in the medical profession, which are openly combated or secretly thwarted by quacks, charlatans, and low class colleges. It clearly is not for want of degree granting colleges that the Amer- ican doctor is less informed than his brethren in other countries, for it seems that, taking the average of all other countries as a fair average, there are schools enough in America to educate medical men for 300,000,000 people, but in most of them the standards for matriculation and graduation have been put down so low as to make au American diploma almost a reproach in other countries. It will be remembered that Dr. Rauch, of the Illinois