Report of the Parliamentary Committee of the Loyal National Repeal Association on the Bill for regulating the profession of physic & surgery [proposed by Sir James Graham], with observations on medical education / [Sir John Gray].

  • John Gray
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Parliamentary Committee of the Loyal National Repeal Association on the Bill for regulating the profession of physic & surgery [proposed by Sir James Graham], with observations on medical education / [Sir John Gray]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    43/52 (page 41)
    a madman would embark unprovided with a store of practical knowledge.”* This being the present state of the profession, can any¬ thing be done to put an end to the horrid “sacrifice” here spoken of? There is, I apprehend, a plain, simple, and efficacious remedy. It would be little better than quackery to suggest changes of detail in the curricula. The reform to be effective must begin where education ends—it must begin with the final examination. Let there be a search¬ ing, a 'practical examination, of the candidate, and there will be no more “victims at the shrine of experience.” Let the examination be transferred from the College Hall to the Hospital. Let the candidate for a degree entitling him to tamper with human life, and the complex diseases to which our frame is liable, be taken to the bedside of a suf¬ fering patient: call on him to diagnose the disease—to point out the signs and symptoms on which his diagnosis is formed—the treatment he would adopt—the indications for that treatment—the effect he Avould expect from it— and the probable course of‘ the malady. Conduct him from bed to bed—bring him to patients suffering under different forms of the same disease—in different stages—with dif¬ ferent complications. Test the quality and amount of his education by ascertaining his power to discriminate be¬ tween the several forms and phases which disease presents, and to select proper remedies for each. This is what he * The lecture from which the above extract is taken, was published in 1821. In 1842 Dr. Graves appended the following note to a reprint of the lecture—“ One-and-twenty years have elapsed since the preceding lecture was delivered in the old Meath Hospital, and my subsequent ex¬ perience has amply verified the opinions therein expressed. I regret to say that, however influential these opinions may have proved in this city, their promulgation has produced little benefit in causing any alteration in the mode of instruction pursued in the medical schools of the united kingdom. So far, indeed, from the mode of conducting medical education being improved, it has decidedly been altered for the worse. * * * If we carefully examine into the instructions given, and the qualifications required, in the first and most recently organized medical school of the day—viz. that of the London university, it would readily appear that a very small part of the student’s time and attention is directed to acquire a knowledge of how dis¬ ease is to be actually treated and cured.” [The London University at this time, required the candidate to produce certificates of having attended the practice of an hospital for 24 months, and a dispensary for 6 months.]