The London medical schools.

  • Gilbert, William, 1804-1890.
Date:
[1877?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The London medical schools. 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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    V will very probably appear that the fault lies considerably more with their teachers and the bad organization of our medical schools, than in the natural manners and habits of the students themselves. Before speaking at greater length on the students as a body, let us cast a glance at the present organization of our metropolitan medical schools, and the conclusion, we submit, will be that anything, more ill-arranged or derogatory to an honourable profession it would be difficult to imagine. Instead of there being one governing body, authorised by Government to control the whole, no matter whether the London University, the College of Surgeons, or any other, each hospital is allowed to have a medical school of its own, without any other supervision than the professors of the school itself, the great object of each being to attract as many pupils as possible to them- selves, and to draw pupils from the other schools. The unprofessional reader, if in the habit of occasionally casting his eye over the columns of the medical periodicals, must have noticed, prior to the commencement of the sessions, numerous advertisements inserted by the different medical schools, detailing the course of instruction to be pursued in them, each offering attractions to students greater than those of competing schools, and that frequently with an amount of self-laudation which could hardly be surpassed by a theatrical manager. They go still farther, and offer at the same time long lists of prizes to be competed for, of greater value, if possible, than those offered by other schools. Nor, as a rule, is any beneficial stimulus produced by these prizes, for we learn from the College of Surgeons itself that the rejection of candidates for diplomas, at their pass examinations, are comparatively quite as numerous among pupils holding these prizes as those without them. A very reprehensible, and, we hold, unfair custom, has of late years been introduced into the competition between the medical schools—that of employing (always, be it understood, with the con- sent of the Charity Commissioners) the charity funds of the hospitals for the advancement of the interests of the medical schools attached to them. This is principally done, we admit, in the case of the wealthier hospitals, whose funds are in excess of the requirements of the patients, though even here exceptions may be found. For example, nothing is more common than to find in the columns of the newspapers urgent appeals to the public in support of the London Hospital, the income of that institution being considerably less than its necessary expenditure ; and yet we find 1 that two years since, although the hospital had given no less than £350 per annum for the maintenance of the medical school, this sum was increased for a certain period to £2,000 per annum. It may be urged, and with truth, that a small interest was to be paid upon the (1) See Lancet, May 13th, 1876.