Two lectures : I. Lectures, books, and practical teaching ; II. Clinical instruction / by W.T. Gairdner.

Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Two lectures : I. Lectures, books, and practical teaching ; II. Clinical instruction / by W.T. Gairdner. 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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    Lectures versus Text-books. serious business we have before us—the study of the practice of medicine. I begin with one concession to the view that tends to look upon lectures as obsolete and effete. There have been, nay, ])erhaps, there still are, lectures of which it might very well be said that they encumber the curriculum of study. The whole processes and methods-—I do not say of medical teaching onl}^, lint of the discipline of the human mind in almost every science and every art—have undergone immense changes even with the present generation, still more since the invention of pi'inting made a great revolution in leaining, and since modern inductive science carried the dry light of exact observation and experi- ment into every department of natui'e. In medicine, as in every- thing else, we simply cannot stand still, for stagnation is anni- hilation. If we have failed to accept the lessons of experience, and to adapt our teaching to the wants of the human mind, not to speak of the needs of the human body, in this nineteenth century of ours, then for us, truly, there is no room in a scheme of modern medical education. Call the instruction we pretend to give lectures, or call it what you will, it must be such as not only conveys to you the bare facts and doctrines of modern medicine, but such as is fitted to impress these upon your minds, and to inspire them with the spirit of modern medicine. Nay, I will go even further in the way of concession. It will not do for a lecturer merely to preach to, or at, his students now-a-days, iu however elegant or appropriate words he does so. The end of a lecture (supposing that lectui'es are to continue to exist) is not to be attained merely by taking notes of it, and transciib- ing these, or getting them by h.eart. I have, indeed, in my time, known and attended lectures which were nothing but articulate text-books ; and of such lectures it might very well be said that they were neither better nor worse than text- books ; or, if anything, worse, seeing that they cost the labour of listening and transcription, while the text-book is procurable for a moderate sum, in the very words of the author, and is always at hand for consultation. Of lectures constructed on this plan T am no apologist. They belong to the past, and may