Observations regarding medical education : in a letter, addressed to the President of the Royal College of Surgeons / by John Simon.

Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations regarding medical education : in a letter, addressed to the President of the Royal College of Surgeons / by John Simon. 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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    tion of medical students would be, in my belief, otherwise and materially promoted, if each school were classed into an upper and a lower department with an appropriate distribu- tion of studies. No principle better ensures the success of mental application, than that of never making a new step till the security of the last have been tested and approved ; and I should think it expedient to apply this principle to the above-mentioned distinction, and nowise to suffer a student to advance beyond the junior department of his school, except on satisfactory evidence of his attainment * in its studies. It seems to me that the arrangement, I propose, would have the following advantages: (1.) The pupil would complete his knowledge of the more extensive subjects, not, as at present, by repeated attend- ance on the same series of lectures, but by continuous and regulated progression, from the elementary to the intricate studies of the science. (2.) For the junior school there might prevail a less formal tone of instruction, more frequent examinations, more en- couragement and supervision of parallel reading, and of other private study, than belong to the present system. (3.) A more convenient distribution of subjects would be possible, since it might differ in the two departments ; for, as the younger student has to study medicine in its princi- ples, and to'contemplate it as a science, while the elder student learns it in its practice, in order to apply it as an art,—the antithesis of their pursuits might well reach even to the spirit and intention, in which they both cultivate a common ground.* * Thus, for the junior, therapeutics would be studied generally, as the science, which is one—and in the principles, which are common—for .ill the de- nominations of the healing art; while, contrariwise, for the senior, the science would be yicwed only in its branchings and specialities, as embodied in the va- rious forms of medical, surgical, and obstetrical practice. Thus again, in early pupilage, biology is to be studied, .'is the science of a power common to health and c 2