Syllabus of materia medical for the use of teachers and students : based on a selection or definition of subjects in teaching and examining and also on an estimate of the relative values of articles and preparations in the British Pharmacopœia with doses affixed / by Alexander Harvey and Alexander Dyce Davidson.

  • Harvey, Alexander, 1811-1889.
Date:
1873
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Syllabus of materia medical for the use of teachers and students : based on a selection or definition of subjects in teaching and examining and also on an estimate of the relative values of articles and preparations in the British Pharmacopœia with doses affixed / by Alexander Harvey and Alexander Dyce Davidson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    jects of examination increased in number,—and each subject grown to colossal dimensions. For long, in our schools, the theoretical teaching has in a great measure swamped the practical, and no less the practical training. The two branches that most directly bear on the proper—the daily—business of the professional life,'—Medicine and Midwifery—are (here at least) relegated to the fourth and last year. It is not till the end of the third winter session that students are free to give their undivided attention to these branches. With many students, the summer following counts for little, and, with more, the autumn for still less. It is not till October or November that they grapple in real earnest with those two branches. And, then, these are saddled with a third—a very interesting and important, yet a large and a difficult branch—Medical Jurisprudence. At the end of that fourth winter session, most students offer themselves for examination, and most of them pass. We do not complain that they do. But we cannot for¬ bear expressing our sense of the absurdity of those three large and two of them cardinal subjects being “ got-up ” within a space so brief. One would think that our stu¬ dents are meant to be Botanists, or Chemists, or Drug¬ gists, or Anatomists, or Physiologists, rather than medi¬ cal practitioners—specially charged with the duty of ministering to the sick and the dying, to women labour¬ ing of child, and their offspring. No doubt, it may be said that the principles must be learnt before the prac¬ tice (the theoretical practice) is entered on. But what if (as is the case) the former be carried to the extent of stunting and dwarfing the latter P It is not so in other crafts : the principles are learnt through and along with
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