Medical politics : being the essay to which was awarded the first Carmichael prize, of £200, by the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland, 1873 / by Isaac Ashe.

  • Ashe, Isaac, 1834-1891.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical politics : being the essay to which was awarded the first Carmichael prize, of £200, by the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland, 1873 / by Isaac Ashe. 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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    ducted, is practical medical study. Regular courses of lectures, though of great auxiliary value, cannot be compared with this in importance; they are indeed only a means of systematising hospital observations and studies. If hospital study be omitted a four years’ course of attendance on lectures that might easily be got over in two comes to be little more than an arbitrary trade restriction; and however earnestly we advocate every enforcement of trade restriction that represents real value gained by the student, and solid benefit conferred on the public in exchange for the higher emoluments and status we desire, we would yet equally earnestly deprecate anything that savoured of trade restriction as such, and apart from such advantages and benefits. Yet we find that many Corporations require two years’ hospital study only, the University of London, strange to say, being among the list; and the University of Dublin requiring two years only for the M.B. degree, but three years for the M.C. The Apothecaries’ Society of England requires fifteen months only—namely, two winter sessions and one summer session. This it will be recollected is for a licence accepted as a full qualification in medicine by the Army, Navy, and Poor Law Boards, and constituting indeed the sole medical licence possessed by much the larger majority of practitioners in England. We have had occasion to congratulate this Corporation on the comparatively high character of its preli- minary studies; we regret that we should now be obliged as thoroughly to condemn the inefficient hospital curriculum herein laid down, both as insufficient for the due medical instruction of the student, and as underbidding the curriculum of other Boards to a most serious extent. We would com- mend this point to the notice of the assembled representatives of other Boards at the General Medical Council. It will of course be said in answer that the five years’ apprenticeship required by the Hall is equivalent to three years’ hospital; but against this view we most emphatically protest. The five years’ apprenticeship may be passed, nay in all probability