Letter to the Right Honourable Sir James Spittal, Lord Provost, to the magistrates and Town-Council of Edinburgh, on the expediency of continuing the Chair of Pathology in the University of Edinburgh / by Robert Lewins.

  • Lewins, Robert.
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letter to the Right Honourable Sir James Spittal, Lord Provost, to the magistrates and Town-Council of Edinburgh, on the expediency of continuing the Chair of Pathology in the University of Edinburgh / by Robert Lewins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    pursuit, he would not be a good physician : but this is not at all what is intended; the sole object being, that a phy- sician should have that liberal education which is implied in a course of University attendance. By acquiring this, the mind would be invigorated for any intellectual pursuit, and it could superinduce no habit disqualifying for the activity of exertion, or for mingling in society as a medical man must do. Such education also, it is to be remem- bered, would be completed, or nearly so, before.medical pursuits commenced, certainly long before practice was attempted, and would not therefore have the effect which is here supposed. But there is a different reason assigned for not making the standard of education, previously to entering upon the study of physic, or even to conferring a degree in it, very high. 6 There are other degrees,' Dr Alison proceeds to observe, e such as diplomas to surgeons and apothe- caries, which are obtained by a less expensive education than that which is given in the University, and on which a great number of medical men practise all branches of the profession in all parts of the country with success and re- putation. Unless it can be made quite clear that any ad- ditional qualifications which we demand will raise the value of the degree of our graduates in the eyes of the public, and increase, therefore, their chance of professional success, the effect of making our degree more difficult of attainment will only be to increase the proportion of medical men prac- tising upon inferior degrees, and to lower rather than to elevate, upon the whole, the general average of the attain- ments of professional men.' It is thus represented, that because, which is undoubt- edly true, there are men who practise with little or no li- terary attainment, the general tone of the profession should be lowered, or at least that no attempt should be made to elevate it, because, the expense being thus increased, the number of enlightened graduates would be diminished, and practice would be surrendered, much more than it is, to those of inferior qualifications. But this reasoning is far from being conclusive. There is, it is to be lamented, too great a disposition in many to prefer quackery to sound medical science ; and by those who do so, the literature of medical men will not be held in much estimation. But as no one would contend that, on this account, quackery should be preferred to knowledge, upon the same ground it would