The past, the present, and the future of the medical profession in the United States of America : being a general introductory to the course of lectures in the third session of the Kentucky School of Medicine / delivered by Thomas D. Mitchell, November 2, 1852.

  • Mitchell, Thomas D. (Thomas Duché), 1791-1865.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The past, the present, and the future of the medical profession in the United States of America : being a general introductory to the course of lectures in the third session of the Kentucky School of Medicine / delivered by Thomas D. Mitchell, November 2, 1852. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    was required to present proof, satisfactory, that he had been a respectable practitioner of medicine during the term of four years, having previously studied medicine under the guidance of a regular member of the profession. To expect such persons to abandon a lucrative practice in two success sive winters, or in two winters with an interval more pro- tracted, was too Utopian for actual experiment. Had such a plan been adopted on paper, it could not have been carried out to any considerable extent, and many, who, under the rule as enacted, became respectable graduates, would have remained as irregular practitioners to the day of their death. This consideration, alone, was too important to be overlook- ed, in the decision of the case. But it is well to look at the actual operation of the rule. What kind of pupils came to the school, under this novel provision? Were they the rash, the giddy, the thoughtless, the immature persons who sometimes find a place in medical classes? On the contrary, they were men who had by daily intercourse with all grades of society for several years, ac- quired a common sense character, a steadiness of purpose, a talent of concentration, fitting them for rapid improvement by the daily culture of a well organized school. They knew the value of time too well to trifle with it, and they had fami- lies at remote points, who, sighing for their return, would ex- pect irom them a fixed devotion to the object that had led to a temporary expatriation. And as a general rule, it has turn- ed out, that these men of one course of lectures, have almost invariably passed the most satisfactory examinations, for the degree of Doctor of Medicine, and have ultimately become valuable members of the profession. At the present day, when almost every State in the Union has its medical school, and when in some of them, we may count at least hall a dozen institutions devoted to the work of making doctors, there is far less propriety in retaining the rule of which we have been speaking, than there was in its •first enactment. Then, it was devised because of the scar- city of medical schools, and the difficulties that beset the path of him who sighed for the doctorate. But now that these institutions are so easy of access, it is the opinion of many judicious men, that it is hardly necessary to retain the regulation on our medical statute books. Most assuredly, the schools of Philadelphia, where the rule is just as fash- ionable as it ever was in the West, can present no valid rea- son for perpetuating it. They graduate practitioners of four years' standing, after attending one course of lectures, know- ing that the pupils go from places in the West, not twenty miles from well known schools of medicine, where they could