Medical education in New York.

  • Rideing, William Henry, 1853-1918.
Date:
[1882]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical education in New York. 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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    i- fi 1'^HE village physician of the colonial _ period was usually the village parson also, and if he lacked success in healing the body, he made atonement in the zeal with which he sought the soul’s salvation. His pharmacopoeia and operations were primitively simple. His knowledge was small in quantity, largely empirical, and inexact in quality. A popular sentiment debarred him from the practice of obstet- rics, which was limited to midwives, and all that he knew was acquired from the old country. Many years passed before efforts were instituted to provide system- atic courses of instruction, and according to Dunglison’s interesting History of Medicine, the earliest lessons in the science given in America were the ana- tomical demonstrations of Dr. Thomas Cadwalader at Philadelphia. In 1750 a body was dissected by students in New York, and in 1767 the first medical school was opened in that city. In no other de- partment of science, art, or literature has the advancement been completer or more .substantial than that which the medical profession shows Ijetween the opening of this first school in the city and the present time. The nncleus then was in a few young men secretly unravelling the com- plex mysteries of the human body in an obscure building long since swept out of existence — learning by dissection what can be learned in no other way, and yet compelled to exercise the caution of a thief in preventing discovei’y, so violent Avas the popular prejudice against the mutila- tion of the body for any purposes. The results now are seen in numerous colleges, which, in connection with hospitals un- surpassed by any in equipment, attract thousands of students from all parts of tlie continent, and which have gathered about them faculties composed of the most emi- nent surgeons and physicians the age has produced in the Western hemisphere. It would be difficult and hazardous to state the precise condition of medical .science in America contrasted with the science abroad, but it may be said with entire ve- I'acity that no occupation in the United States stands higher numerically, social- I 1 if A.