Notes on medical education : being replies to the inquiries addressed to teachers by the General Medical Council / by John Struthers.

  • Struthers, John, 1823-1899.
Date:
1873
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes on medical education : being replies to the inquiries addressed to teachers by the General Medical Council / by John Struthers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the Physiology course admits of being, to a large extent, conducted by the tutorial method—the question and answer method, with explanations, the teacher also showing experiments. Part II.—Further Observations in connection with Medical Education. I have long spoken and written against too much lecturing in Medical Education. But some have carried this too far, not discriminating between use and abuse. Besides setting a limit to the number, the question is not so much one between lectures or no lectures, as between good lectures and bad. There may be three kinds of lecturing—1. Elementary description, like a spoken text-book ; 2. Criticism and discussion ; 3. Exhibition and explanation of objects or experiments. It should be borne in mind that now there are good text- books in all the departments of medical education, and that these are in the students’ hands; that the sciences are too extensive to be treated exhaustively, and that especially mere details are unsuited for the lecture-room. Also that the most vicious form of lecturing is that of addressing the memory, usually termed cramming or grinding. A good lecture will partake of the three kinds above indicated, in proportions varying with the nature of the subject ; it should be devoted to the illustration and enforcement of the great facts and principles of the science, to explaining difficulties, to the discussion of different views, to pointing out where further inquiry is needed, and the whole conducted so as to train the student’s observing and reflecting faculties, instead of overloading his memory. Lectures will always be more valuable in the demonstrative sciences, as Anatomy and Chemistry. Were the lecture to consist of demonstrations only, it would be more useful if given in a more practical form to small groups, but the value of such lectures depends largely on the due blending of the exhibition of objects and phenomena, with the enunciation of ideas and principles, and their application to the art. Lectures in departments which admit of little objective illustration must be valueless if they are mere compilations.