On the centralisation of medical education by the University of London / by A.D. Waller.

  • Waller, Augustus Désiré, 1856-1922.
Date:
[1901]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On the centralisation of medical education by the University of London / by A.D. Waller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    4/10 (page 4)
    for research and teaching in all branches of each subject. The localisation of the institutes was to be determined by the Senate. The buildings of existing medical schools were to be rented by the University, their equipment taken over at a valuation, and the interests of the teachers were to be equit- ably safeguarded. The patent objection to full concentration in one centre seems to have been the principal cause of this alternative scheme of demi-eoncentration in three or four centres as just sketched. It was a half-measure suggesting itself to those teachers who, while feeling the needier c'oncentration^ felt also the practical impossibility and unwisdom of its thorough application to London. But the practical objections to this half-measure are very great as soon as an attempt is made to- consider its establishment and operation. Partial concen- tration in, let us say, four schools, to the exclusion of the re- maining eight schools, is manifestly unjust to the latter, which, whatever rental, valuation, or other “ safeguard” they might be disposed to accept, would necessarily lose in value and importance as compared with the schools selected by the Senate as university institutes. Yet if it were clearly de- monstrated that such individual hardship would conduce to- the public advantage by leading to the ultimate establish- ment of the early medical studies on a solid and efficient footing, it might he incumbent that this sacrifice of individual schools should be accomplished. But in common with many other half-measures, partial con- centration, without escaping the disadvantages of a more thorough measure, loses its principal advantages. To transfer resources and functions from twelve to three or four partici- pants would no doubt improve the efficiency of the latter, but would certainly not provide the University of London with three or four first-class institutes in each of the three early medical subjects, fully provided, both as to teachers and equipment, for research and teaching in all branches of each subject. An institute of this character, even if its entry were strictly limited to 150 new students per annum, would suffer from the defect of congestion, and would scarcely satisfy both the elementary practical needs of over 300 students and the all- absorbing interest of research, whether for its own sake or as a part of the higher teaching. Then as regards equipment, while it is perhaps allowable to hope that the University of London may in the not distant future possess one first-class institute in anatomy and in physiology (inclusive of pharma- cology), no teacher acquainted with the duties and functions of a first-class institute would dream of expecting the University of London to possess three or four such institutes in each of these sciences. It is evident, however, that the proposers of concentration in three or four institutes have in view, not institutes of learning of the highest grade, but principally high-class teaching institutions, and that the far-reaching influence upon teaching institutions of a single first-class institute of learning has not yet entered into their conception of the interests of medical education in London. Anatomy and physiology, which together constitute the early or intermediate medical studies, of which the medical schools proper are the present instruments, have to be con- sidered together as one group in any general scheme of con- centration; but the differences of condition and establi&h-