Preliminary medical education at provincial hospitals / by William Paul Swain.

Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Preliminary medical education at provincial hospitals / by William Paul Swain. 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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    be filled in with the innumerable details which crowd into twelve months' hospital work. Sufficient, however, has been said to show that to a willing student the time so spent will not be lost. I must, however, remark here that much depends upon the teacher. If a man takes pupils he is bound in common honesty to give up much of his time, his energy, and his intellect to them. Boys will be boys', and, as a rule, idle boys. They must be looked after and kept up to the mark, and if they find the teacher interested in the work, regular and earnest about it, ten to one they will respond with an equal amount of interest and assiduity. If they are left to themselves, turned into a room with the bones, and thence into the surgery with the pestle and mortar and the pill roller, the result can only be disastrous to the pupil and damaging to the repu- tation of the teacher. Let me now turn to the second alternative, viz., the spending the whole four years of professional study at the Medical School. Not to reiterate my objections to this plan, let me give some, out of many, reasons why a pupil, however much theoretical knowledge he may obtain, runs a considerable risk of leaving his Medical School and en- tering upon private practice with little or no practical acquaintance with his profession. And first let me again quote the Examiners at the College of Surgeons. They say, In our judgment too much reliance is placed on lectures, and too little provision is made for practical teaching. The prevailing defects of candidates for the diploma of Members are want of accurate knowledge of objects and facts, and want of skill in using the appliances of surgery. For these defects the remedy is the addition of practical teaching in every part of necessary knowledge in which it does not now exist, together with its greater completeness where any does exist. Next let me quote some opinions from an appendix to a report of the Com-