A plea for liberty of medical teaching : a letter addressed to the General Council of Medical Education and Registration / by John T. Arlidge.

Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A plea for liberty of medical teaching : a letter addressed to the General Council of Medical Education and Registration / by John T. Arlidge. 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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    TO THE MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL COUNCIL OF MEDICAL EDUCATION AND REGISTRATION. Gentlemen, As the matter of Medical Education is placed by the Government of the country very considerably under your immediate control, and as it is one of the foremost questions of the day, I venture to lay before you, with all due respect, some considerations thereon, which, to my mind at least, appear of the last importance, and which will I trust commend themselves to your attention. Under existing laws, and the bye-laws of Medical Corporations, the education of students for the practice of medicine is made almost a monopoly of the metropolitan towns in each division of the kingdom, but especially so in England. Keeping this last named country chiefly in view, (albeit the remarks I shall make apply with more or less force and accuracy to Scotland and Ireland) the truth of this assertion is sufficiently demonstrated by the fact that London far out- numbers all other towns having medical schools, taken together, in its crowds of students. The attraction of young men to the largest cities of the kingdom, and particularly to London, in the pursuit of medical knowledge is inevitable; because, speaking generally, the opportunities for instruc- tion, both in the way of schools and teachers, may fairly be expected to excel those to be found in smaller towns. Hence there appears jyrima facie reason for the enactment of regulations to encourage the resort of students to great educational centres. Yet, granting this, it is, in my humble opinion, nevertheless true, that the regulations for study now in force operate too entirely in the way of centralizing medical education during the whole curri- culum, and of depriving provincial institutions of their due share therein. I am aware that there is nothing in existing regulations actually prohibitory to the establishment of a medical school in any town in the kingdom boasting a hospital of fair dimensions ; yet practically