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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    which obliges professional teaching to advance under dif- ferent, perhaps opposite, impulses. The superior advan- tages of a system, under which the representatives of the three branches of our profession, acting in acknowledged concert, might dictate some single standard of ordinary education; and severally exercise a power of special juris- diction, only in regulating the concerns, and awarding the titular distinctions, of their particular classes,—can hardly be overlooked. The present certificate-system has, I fear, fallen some degrees below the zero of unsuccess. Its most sanguine defenders plead no higher merit in its favour, than its power to enforce bodily attendance ; and this power, just in pro- portion to its cogency in constraining an involuntary pre- sence, would be as disheartening to the zealous teacher, as irksome to the indifferent pupil; it might augment the audience by a few, each of whom would circumfuse an atmosphere of sleepiness, or maintain an under-current of whispered gossip. It is only free from this censure, in case of being utterly powerless ; and so it has indeed become, in the notorious laxity of its administration. To loosen the reins of discipline bespeaks popularity, since students will most densely flock, where the bugbear of compulsion is not; hence must obviously originate an identification of profit with wrong-doing ; the discouragement of wholesome strictness; rivalry in indulgence; a race of relaxation; a lure to dereliction of duty. It is not in the scope of the certificates to record more than the opportunities, which the student has enjoyed, for acquiring scientific information ; these are abundantly specified ; but his industry, character, and attainments pass unmentioned, While, however, as re- gards their testimony toapupiFs education,they are little more than the recognised receipts for entrance-money, as paid at a particular school,—they constitute, by their extremely circumstantial form, a close restriction to the teacher; and bind