An address delivered at the opening of the section of pathology / by A. Sheridan Selépine, at the annual meeting of the British Medical Association in Carlisle, July, 1896.
- Delépine, Sheridan, 1855-1921.
- Date:
- [1896]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: An address delivered at the opening of the section of pathology / by A. Sheridan Selépine, at the annual meeting of the British Medical Association in Carlisle, July, 1896. 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.
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![5. Etiology and pathogenesis are taught by means of lec- tures, which are sometimes complemented by a practical course in bacteriology. 6. Experimental pathology is reserved for advanced stu- dents, and does not form a regular part of any curriculum. If all these subjects were taught by the same man, he would certainly not require to say in systematic lectures what he had already clearly explained at the bedside, or in the post-mortem room, or in the laboratory; he would as much as possible try to save his own time as well as that of his pupils by not re- peating himself. He would reserve for lectures those subjects that cannot be easily and better taught by actual demonstra- tion. Is it possible for three or four men teaching the various branches of the same subject so to combine their efforts as to give students the benefit of advantages which they would derive from being taught by a single man ? I believe that, within certain limits, such a thing is possible on condition that the following principles be kept in mind by all teachers : 1. Every fact capable of simple actual demonstration should be taught by means of demonstration whenever this method does not involve excessive loss of time, considerable expense, wanton cruelty, or a knowledge of methods unknown to the student. 2. In each department the teacher should, as much as is compatible with clearness, confine his teaching to the de- monstration and exposition of those facts whicla fall within the natural sphere and the actual work of his department. It may be said that a teacher of, say, gynaecology may be a better authority on bacteriology than the colleague who has charge of that department. I select on purpose the most unlikely accident. Would this justify the teacher of gynae- cology in lecturing on bacteriology? Certainly not, for the student would in the end be the loser; his time spent in the bacteriological department would be wasted, and in the gynsecological department his opportunities of learning gynaecology would be diminished. The morbid anatomist, who, giving a demonstration on carcinoma of the rectum, would lecture at length on the symptoms of intestinal obstruction, instead of attracting the attention of the student to the anatomical lesions found in such cases, would cause the student a serious loss of time; for there are better opportunities off'ered to him in the wards for learning by personal experience under the direction of competent clinical teachers the symptoms in question. In the same way it would be a serious mistake on the part of the clinical teacher to devote the greater part of a clinical lecture on tuberculosis to a detailed account of the various methods used for cultivating and for staining the tubercle bacillus. His duty does not go beyond showing the applica- tion of some of these methods in practice, and the more time he gives to the description of the symptoms which he can show to the student, to the methods of diagnosis and treatment, and to the course of disease during life, the more the student will benefit from his teaching and use his time profitably^^^ to me also important that the time devoted to the study of each branch of medicine should be ]3roportional to the relative importance of the facts and principles taught rather than to the number of details which have erroneously](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21453871_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
