Distinction without separation : in a letter to the president of the College of Surgeons, on the present state of the profession / Joseph Henry Green.

  • Green Joseph Henry, 1791-1863.
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Distinction without separation : in a letter to the president of the College of Surgeons, on the present state of the profession / Joseph Henry Green. 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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    Of the result of Mr. BelPs suggestions to government we are not informed; and several years of naval and military war- like operations, with the single exception of the short-lived peace of Amiens, elapsed, with the usual proportion of sickli- ness and mortality, bloodshed and slaughter, without any other step being taken to qualify the surgeons of the army and navy for their specific duties, than what was afforded to the civil practitioner. Of these even, it may be remarked, from the limited qualifications then prescribed, with the great number of medical oflScers required, the supply was rather stinted and pe- nurious. At length, in the year 1806, when Lord Grenville was in office, it was deemed expedient to institute a professorship of Military Surgery in the University of Edinburgh. * * * * * * On the resignation of Dr. Thomson, in the year 1822, the professorship of Military Surgery was conferred on the author of the present volume, who forthwith proceeded, in the winter of 1823-4, to deliver a course of lectures. Dr. Bal- lingall had at first to contend with great difficulties, in con- sequence of a very general impression, that lectures on mil- itary surgery were superfluous, if not useless; that all the necessary information was communicated by the teachers of surgery generally; and that, even if instructions of this kind were requisite in time of war, the existence and pros- pect of a long period of peace held out little inducement to spend, in the acquisition of details which might never be requisite, time and money, which were urgently required for other professional studies. These considerations contributed to keep the chair long in the back-ground; and to a teacher of less perseverance and assiduity, might have formed insurmountable impediments. By persevering, however, in delivering annual courses of lec- tures,—by showing his capacity for the task—by collecting, digesting and publishing, whatever information was pertinent to the duty of the medical officer,—and, above all, by making the course one not of military surgery, but miUtary medicine and surgery, in the most comprehensive sense of the term, Sir George Ballingall has succeeded in obtaining for his de- partment of professional study a degree of consideration which it probably never would have acquired by any other mode. In 1829, a favourable change of public opinion was evinced by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, who had already prescribed two courses of surgery, allowing stu'lents to attend lectures on military surgery in place of one of these; and last season, the heads of the medical departments of the