Statement for the University Court of the University of Glasgow by Professor Gairdner, in support of Professor Macleod's appeal against a decision of the Senate of the University, on fourteenth February, 1878.

  • Gairdner, W. T. (William Tennant), Sir, 1824-1907.
Date:
[1878]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Statement for the University Court of the University of Glasgow by Professor Gairdner, in support of Professor Macleod's appeal against a decision of the Senate of the University, on fourteenth February, 1878. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    35/40 (page 33)
    he had from the first, as one of its originators and as its physician, exercised a large amount of control. Tt was open to me to have placed difficulties in the way of this arrangement, but I did not do so, believing that on the whole the University would be the better for it. But all communications between Dr. Anderson and me with reference to a Clinical Chair must be read in the light of our previous associations, and it is simply impossible that he could have approached me on the subject at all without feeling that he had something to gain and I nothing; nay, that he, a compara- tively young man, and not many years even a hospital physician, had almost everything to gain, whereas I, already a Professor and engaged for mure than twenty years in teaching Clinical as well as systematic Practice of Medicine, using the one to illustrate the other, had interests to protect which I notoriously regarded as being much more than even my own personal interests in connection with clinical instruction. Under these circumstances, what did Dr. Anderson say to me, not at all under pressure, but entirely of his own accord? for he is quite right in affirming that I never asked him to come under any obliga- tion. What he said (calling upon me expressly for the purpose) was to the effect that the pending question of the Chair of Clinical Surgery had caused it to be suggested to him (he did not say by whom) that he too might possibly make good an entrance into the University as a Clinical Professor; and that he thought our relations hitherto in the Royal Infirmary might dispose me to accept him as a colleague, if he could in other respects accomplish what he had in view, but that he was advised to confer with me about it in the first instance. He added that a chief motive with him in seeking this appointment was to keep his work well together; because having already obtained the skin wards in the Western Infirmary, it would be very incon- venient to continue attendance as a medical officer at the Royal. He further added (all this being absolutely without any kind of pressure or even suggestion from me) that he had no intention at all of inter- fering with my position, or my work, as a clinical teacher; but that he supposed the time might come when from illness or advancing age it would be agreeable to me to have some one in the University who could share the burden of clinical instruction with me, and that as we had always co-operated most amicably in the Royal Infirmary, he hoped we might do so in the Western, if he could succeed in securing a position there on the footing proposed. On this I spoke to Dr. Anderson quite frankly, and exactly in accordance with what is given E