Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Some observations on medical education / by Andrew Wood. 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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![from individual liuman nature, excepting, indeed, that tlie former being shared by numbers, whilst no less inclined to selfishness, has less feeling of responsibility ; whilst human nature, I say, continues to be what it is, statutory enactment is absolutely necessary in order to carry out salutary changes which infer interference with real or supposed corporate interests. Even were the debates of the Medical Council reported for the press, as they certainly ought to be, and as I confidently trust they will erelong be, the moral suasion thereby exerted would, I fear, prove inefficacious. As long as these debates are carried on as hitherto in secret, the amount of moral suasion or of influence of any kind that the Medical Council can expect to exert must be infinitesimal. ]\Iost unquestionably, important changes in reference to medical study and examination ought, before being carried out in action by any of the licensing bodies, to be brought under the notice of the Medical Council, where all interests are represented, to be by them con- sidered and decided on. Especially is such a course necessary where these changes infer reduction of the curriculum of study or diminution of the stringency of the examination. Having premised these few observations as to the regulating powers of the profession under the Medical Act, I proceed to make some remarks on the several subjects of medical tuition and medical examination, and the im- provements upon these as at present existing, which seem desirable. There are various ways in which knowledge may be acquired by the medical student, chiefly these ; 1st, Attendance on lectures in recognised medical schools ; 2d, Private reading ; and, Sd, Prac- tical observation in the dissecting-room, in the hospital, in the dis- pensary, in the laboratory. Under this last category, we may also place apprenticeship, which, in Scotland at least, of late years, has been gradually disappearing, though, perhaps, it may be questioned whether apprenticeship when properly conducted might not still be considered a useful adjunct to medical education. Each and all of these methods of learning, lectures, reading, and practical observation, are important, even essential; no one of them can supersede the other, nor ought any one of them to be magnified at the expense of the other. To ascertain the right place, and order, and due proportion of these is the Q. E. D. of the pre- sent agitation, and it is a problem which seems hardly to have been solved as yet, and is certainly by no means so simple as might be thought by those who have not attempted its solution. Professor Syme says, that too much lecturing is an evd, one into which, especially of late years, we have run. He is probably](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21976260_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
