Copy of a letter to George Aitchison, Esq. College Bailie, containing some remarks on a communication from the Senatus Academicus to the Patrons of the University of Edinburgh / [John Thomson].

  • John Thomson
Date:
[1831]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Copy of a letter to George Aitchison, Esq. College Bailie, containing some remarks on a communication from the Senatus Academicus to the Patrons of the University of Edinburgh / [John Thomson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    S3 Surgery and of Clinical Medicine, I ventured to make the following prediction: That a proposal for adding two new Professors to the Senatus Academicus, will be approved of by all those who have already obtained admission into that Body, it would be too much to expect. The resistance which has been al- . ready so frequently made to the introduction of Teachers of the different branches of Surgery into the University, even when these attempts proceeded from, or were seconded by,* the College of Surgeons; the long continued, though ulti¬ mately unsuccessful, opposition to the establishment of a Professorship of Conveyancing, notwithstanding the strong support which this measure received from the Society of Writers to the Signet; the success with which the esta- tablishment of Chairs for teaching Political Economy, and Comparative Anatomy and Veterinary Medicine has hi¬ therto been resisted, notwithstanding the liberal offer of a body of private individuals in the one case, and of the Highland Society in the other, to endow these Chairs, and the difficulty which was so lately experienced in convincing the Senatus Academicus of the propriety of adding the Midwifery Class to the Medical Curriculum,—^fully evince how difficult it is, even for what must be considered as a body of the best educated men in the country, to witness^ without jealousy, the extension of the same privileges to others, of which they themselves are already possessed.” I shall only further add, that the opinions which I en-
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